COGITO Talks… Lean on Me: Three pillars for rural prosperity

This conversation took place at the 2025 OECD Latin American Rural Development Conference, Rural-Urban Connections: Pathways to Sustainable Development, which took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil between 25-28 November 2025.

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Blurb

The OECD Report for Regional Policy for Greece Post-2020 revealed that 32% of the population lives in predominantly rural regions which is significantly higher than the OECD average share of rural population which is around 25%. Of those living in predominantly rural regions (~3.4 million people), roughly 3 million live in remote rural regions meaning Greece has one of the largest shares in this demographic among OECD countries.

Recorded live from the OECD Rural Development Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Greek officials Vasiliki Pantelopoulou (Secretary-General of the Partnership Agreement) and Christos Kyrkoglou (General Director of Monitoring and Implementation) explain Greece’s approach to rural urban development under the European Union’s Cohesion Policy and the role of Integrated Territorial Investments (ITIs). They describe their respective roles in coordinating and implementing programmes financed through the Partnership Agreement, stressing the importance of integrating urban and rural policies. Sit back, relax and take a listen!

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Transcript

Host

Welcome to OECD Podcast, where policy meets people.

Shayne

Hi, I’m Shane McLachlan. Welcome to OECD Podcast today where live in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil at the OECD Rural Development Conference and I’m joined by two Greek colleagues today, Vasiliki Pantelopoulou and Christos Kyrkoglou, who are here to talk about rural and regional policies in Greece and what they’re doing in terms of development. So what I might do is ask Vasiliki first, if you could just describe what your day looks like, your job, what you’re involved with at the moment in your work.
 
Vasiliki

Yes, of course. First, thank you very much for the invitation. In order to describe my role, let me please say some things about Greece and how Greece works and what is this partnership agreement. So, Greece is a member state of the European Union, and eight member state makes, with the European Commission, every seven years, a partnership agreement that gives to each country a budget about cohesion policy.
 
What is cohesion policy? Cohesion policy has three pillars: the economic cohesion, the social cohesion and the territorial convergence. So, the main goal of cohesion policy is to ensure that European integration and growth are balanced, inclusive and territorially fair, so that no European region is left behind.

So, my role as a Secretary General of Partnership Agreement is that I oversee the coordination and the implementation of all actions and programs that are amplifying through partnership agreement. I also supervise the absorption of these funds. I represent Greece in front of the European Committee in matters related to cohesion policy and the implementation of the partnership agreement. So, this is my role, actually.
 
Shayne

Those are your hats, excellent. That’s great. And passing over to Christos, what does your role involve in terms of monitoring and implementation?

Christos

First of all, allow me to thank you for the invitation. My role is, I have the position of General Director of the so-called coordination authorities, they are authorities which operate under the Secretary General of Ms. Pantelopoulou. They give instructions, guidelines to the so-called managing authorities in order to fund the project of the partnership agreement. I stand above these coordination authorities, trying to coordinate them to support their operation in order to work in the most efficient way.

Shayne

Brilliant. Okay. Well, we’re all about efficiency cohesion and as well these urban and rural connections. And that’s what we’re talking about in these days here in Rio at the Rural Policy Conference of the OECD. Maybe Vasiliki, you might go in a little bit to the partnership and how these urban rural connections are happening, particular to Greece.

Vasiliki

Yes. For Greece, the connection between rural and urban areas is one of, I would say, fundamental pillars of the country’s economic and social cohesion because we always talk about cohesion when we’re talking about partnership agreement. So, although they’re often presented as two different worlds, in reality these two spaces are interdependent, and they function in a very good, complementary way.

So, their connections are shaped through transport infrastructure, economic flows, social exchanges and environmental synergies. And they form a single integrated network that influences the development of both rural areas and cities. I think Mr. Kyrkoglou could say more things or more detailed things about some investments or some actions that have been made in Greece. But I would like to talk about a strategy that the European Union has designed, and it is something that I coordinate in it with help of Mr. Kyrkoglou and it is called ITIs.

So, the ITIs is the “Integrated Territorial Investments” and they are in the partnership agreement, the Greek one and they are designed and they are implemented at local and regional level, and they have the following characteristics. They are designed and implemented either by municipalities alone and in this case, we call them sustainable urban development or outside municipal boundaries. And then we have the rural or peri-urban areas. And their design is carried out through consultation, and this consultation involves municipal and regional authorities as well as local, economic and social partners.

So, why these strategies are really important and I think that they work as pioneers in this field because their thematic scope includes urban development with regeneration of public spaces, expansion of green areas and given that local communities and stakeholders, they are those that they know the problems, the strengths and the opportunities of their own territories better than anyone else. It is very important that they are involved from the beginning to the end, from the design to the implementation.

So, it is like we have a holistic approach of the rural and urban connection and also the partnership agreement supports the primary sector and now we have the rural and there we have a dedicated rural development program. So, ITIs from the backbones of Greece’s place-based development approach and they have all these characteristics that they are really important.
 
Shayne

Amazing. Christos, do you want to unpack a little bit the types of investment that are made in these urban rural strategies in Greece?
 
Christos

As Ms. Pantelopoulou said, in fact these ITIs are consistent of strategies, they are strategies and they contain actions and the interventions which cover a wide range of fields. We have actions for improvement of entrepreneurship, actions for the protection of natural environment, we have actions and interventions for urban regeneration and renovation of public spaces like roads, free spaces for the citizens, we have actions for the improvement of infrastructure, roads, pavements and so on. And of course, we have actions for the improvement of the social cohesion factor in order to tackle poverty and social exclusion.

So, there is a big range of interventions. The amount of this intervention is also very big, it is about €1.8 billion, it is a very significant amount. And the way that these interventions are planned and implemented are based on the wide range of consultation among the engaged stakeholders, make these ITIs complex of strategies very useful and efficient tool in order to support these areas separately, the rural urban areas, but also to improve the linkages in the assistance from one type of area to the other.

Shayne

Yeah, highly important. Good, well thanks for that top level view. Let’s drill down a little bit into one of the strategic priorities of the European Union and indeed regarding rural aspects but let’s talk about housing. Maybe you could go a little bit into that Vasiliki regarding what is happening in Greece and housing in rural areas.

Vasiliki

So, housing has been for some years a challenge for most of the member states of the European Union. Every member state, including Greece, we had to adopt to this new priority in the programmes, in the current programming period, and come up with ideas with plans that will give us affordable and quality housing because that is what we are talking about. The priority is called affordable and sustainable housing.

What do we mean about affordable, affordable regarding mainly about the rent prices and sustainable, it has to do with energy actions or it has to do also with quality. So, the need for people to stay in affordable houses and that they give them and these houses give them a good quality of life.

That was a big challenge also for all the member states, I think. We came up with some ideas regarding renovation. We have come up to some actions, some plans, that they connect the energy upgrade but with renovation also actions, the renovation actions because there is a big stock of old houses in Greece.

There is another big stock of closed houses in Greece, and I think that will give a very good opportunity to people to open this, the closed houses or make the old houses better and the stock of houses will be bigger. So, the market will work, and we will think that we can have a very good result in short time.

Shayne

And Christos, I mean what would you add there in terms of trends in rural areas regarding affordability and sustainability in the housing sector?

Christos

Ths potential for these type of actions according to the measurement of the regulations are included also to the integration territorial investment. That means that the local and regional who are responsible for these strategies in order to incorporate these type of actions as described by Ms. Pantelopoulou. They are working on this scope, these days, this period, the management authorities of the programs also work on amending their programs.

This process which has to be completed until the end of the year. So, we see that we have a new room for housing actions and the interventions. And this complex of integrated territorial investment is very important because it is going to assist in a more efficient way. They all attempt for local and regional development in these areas, rural and urban areas.

Shayne

Urban, yeah. I mean that’s great. We are covering quite a bit of ground here, but just to close, I just like to touch a little bit upon the subject of wildfires. And you know, I’ve got a lot of
friends, they go to Greece in the summer. And obviously, you know, this is a news item that people are seeing more and more. I mean, Greece has faced repeated and severe wildfires in recent years.

What trends concern you most from an economic and a social perspective on wildfires? And what’s happening at the moment regarding prevention and preparedness? I mean, other words, resilience in rural areas which are disproportionately affected by wildfires. What are you seeing in Greece at the moment on that particular topic?

Vasiliki

Yes. First, it’s not something new. I think that all the whole world is affected by the climate change. So, this is one of the, you know, bad results of the climate change. And the main thing is the protection of the people. So, I think that Greece has done great job on this field. We now all have this system that people are warned by their telephone and where to go, what to do, where there is a fire, and they get instructions.

Shayne

Indeed. Christos, I mean, anything to add there regarding the rural dimension?

Christos

In the Paris agreement, we have a lot of actions beyond the actions which belong to the integrated territorial investment. The so-called horizontal actions and horizontal programs, which have the scope to create the prevention circumstances for these type of disasters.

Not only the fires, the massive fires, but also the avoidance of floods, the avoidance of the destroy of natural environment and so on. So, I think that the important thing here is that we have a holistic approach funded by different funding tools. And also, to rural areas which are in danger because of their geocryological characteristics.

Shayne

That’s exactly right. Well, we’ve covered a lot of ground regarding urban rural connections, cohesion policy, we drilled down into housing, and some of the trends are about affordability and sustainable housing. Now he’s spoken about wildfires. I mean, what message would you like colleagues here at the rural policy conference of the OECD to go away with regarding rural policy and its implementation in Greece?

Vasiliki

My message would be that rural areas and urban areas they cannot exist independently. So, they should work together, they should be connected because when they work together, they bring resilience, they bring competitiveness and they bring economic and social cohesion in our regions. So, I think this is the message that we should all keep and work on this design on this our future.

Shayne

Fantastic. And Christos, what message would you like to land with colleagues on rural policy?

Christos

Something additionally, I think that the possibility to support local and regional stakeholders with toolkit, guidelines and so on in order to enable them to better plan, design and implement, all the strategies and actions which are going to assist them. I think that this technical, let’s say, support is going to be, to continue to be very useful because we know that OECD has activated in a very successful way to this kind, to the contact of this type of toolkit strategies, studies and so on.

Vasiliki

I would like also to add something very interesting that we have started cooperation now with OECD. So, OECD will conduct a study for us about the regional development that I think it will be very useful and necessary for us to design and improve how we see the regional of the country, of my country. We’re talking about thirteen different regions, you know, that Greece is a very small country, but it has a highly complex territorial structure.

It combines mountainous landscapes, hundreds of islands and thirteen administrative regions with different needs, different challenges. So, I think this study will be extremely helpful for us to design the future and we’re really looking forward to work with OECD and the excellent team and see the results.
 
Shayne

Well, the feeling is very mutual, the OECD is looking forward to that as well. Thanks for joining us today Vasiliki and Christos on OECD podcast. If you want more information about rural policy, OECD recommendations and work, you can google that and find it on our website.
 
Christos

Thank you.

Vasiliki

Thank you very much.

Host

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