The Citizens‘ Report on the Future of Rural Areas in Bavaria has been presented to State Minister Erwin Huber on October 2nd, 2007, by the youngest and oldest participants, Mr Dominik Vogel and Mrs Katharina Kriesel, in Munich.

State Minister Huber accepted the report, thanking the 50 participants for their work and engagement for the future of rural areas. For the Bavarian Government, rural areas are a highly topical and important field of policy, and the analyses and recommendations of the citizens would certainly be taken into account when forming future policies.

The Citizens‘ Report has been made by randomly selected citizens from the districts of Wunsiedel in the North-East of Bavaria and from the city and district of Landshut in Lower Bavaria (central Bavaria) in four full days workshops, organised by the Society for Citizens‘ Reports (gfb). The Report contains 80 pages with a lot of detailed and prioritised outcomes. It is available online (only in German, though) on this web site and in printed version from gfb and the Ministry (www.stmwivt.bayern.de/landesentwicklung).

This »regional« Citizens‘ Report is part of the European Citizens Panel Projekt on the Future of Rural Areas (www.citizenspanel.eu), the first project of the European Citizens Panel Initiative. gfb has been engaged in this initiative since 2004 and has also organised the (regional) Citizens‘ Report on the Future of Rural Areas in the Canton St. Gall (Switzerland) and facilitated parts of the European level part of the project at Brussels in spring 2007, where 88 citizens from 10 regions in Europe came together to formulate their views on the future of rural areas in Europe as a whole. Mutual understanding and learning from each other were achieved by this first political Citizens Panel/Report project on European level.

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