Are remote rural areas in Europe remarkable? Challenges and opportunities

Remote rural areas are facing strong demographic and socioeconomic challenges as being far from a city can limit social and economic interaction opportunities. This study analyses the EU remote rural areas based on a set of selected indicators related to demographic, economic, accessibility, connectivity, biodiversity, land use and geographical context. Spatial cluster techniques revealed that half of the remote rural areas are in a disadvantaged situation because they performed poorly on most of the analysed indicators. Despite being remote, a few rural areas presented socioeconomic favourable conditions and high natural assets. This finding motivated our investigation to identify statistical differences between remote and non-remote areas by applying multivariate regression models. Our results showed that remote rural areas face major challenges in relation to transport infrastructures, internet speed, access to essential services, household income, population decline and ageing. On the contrary, their natural landscape and ecosystems, as well as agriculture and forestry can offer new opportunities to remote rural areas while contribute to the goals of the EU Green Deal. •Remote rural areas are facing strong demographic and socioeconomic challenges.•A set of socioeconomic and environmental indicators were analysed in remote rural areas.•Spatial cluster revealed that half of the remote rural areas performed socioeconomically poorly.•Multivariate regression models sowed that remote rural areas significantly differ from non-remote.•Natural landscape and ecosystems, agriculture and forestry can offer new opportunities to remote rural areas.