What makes a place somewhere people can choose to stay?
For many rural communities across Europe, this is becoming one of the defining questions of the coming years. The decision to stay is shaped by whether a place can offer the conditions for a viable and fulfilling future: decent and meaningful work, affordable housing, access to essential services, opportunities to build a livelihood or start a business, a sense of belonging and participation, and confidence that future generations can continue to thrive there.
The Right to Stay is grounded in these everyday realities. Across Europe, Social Economy organisations are already helping to strengthen the foundations of rural life by creating local employment, maintaining essential services, supporting entrepreneurship and fostering stronger communities.
A cooperative providing care services, a social enterprise creating opportunities for young people, an energy community retaining value within the territory, or a locally rooted business developing new solutions in food, mobility or tourism can each respond to a specific local need. Taken together, these initiatives contribute to the economic and social fabric that allows rural areas to remain dynamic, resilient and attractive places in which to live and work.
There are already examples within the Diesis Network that show the connection between the Social Economy and the right to stay.
In Ukraine, the Platform for Social Change (PSC) supports social entrepreneurship in small communities. Its Yahidnyi Rai (“Berry Paradise”) cooperative brought together 42 families from 14 villages in the Dunayivtsi community to anticipate and respond to market berries, creating local income and employment where opportunities had declined and outmigration was increasing. It is a clear example of how collective entrepreneurship can create new reasons and opportunities to stay.
In Italy, Federazione Trentina della Cooperazione shows how an established cooperative ecosystem can help rural and mountain communities create and retain value locally. Through initiatives such as Energia inCooperazione and the Fuoco community cooperative, local actors are collectively developing and managing renewable energy, tourism and territorial assets. Together, these experiences show how Social Economy models can turn local resources and community action into lasting economic opportunities.
This contribution reinforces the importance of ensuring that the Social Economy retains a central role within the EU rural agenda. Through the Rural Pact Social Economy Community Group, co-coordinated by Diesis Network, rural actors are bringing practical experience directly into European policy discussions, including the mid-term review of the Social Economy Action Plan and the development of the Right to Stay strategy.
The relevance of the Social Economy extends across many of the issues shaping the future of rural areas, including entrepreneurship, skills, access to services, energy, housing, social inclusion and the green transition. Its cross-cutting contribution makes it an important component of how rural development policies and initiatives are designed and implemented across Europe.
From resilience to rural competitiveness
Competitiveness adds another important dimension to this discussion. For rural territories, it involves creating the conditions for local businesses and entrepreneurs to grow, improving access to finance and support, making better use of territorial assets and ensuring that a greater share of the value generated locally remains within the community.
Social Economy models can contribute to this in particularly effective ways. Cooperatives enable people and businesses to pool resources and access opportunities collectively, while social enterprises can respond to unmet local needs and create employment. Community-led initiatives can also transform local assets — from food and forests to energy, cultural heritage and tourism — into sustainable economic activity rooted in the territory.
The examples of Yahidnyi Rai and the Trentino cooperative movement demonstrate two different routes towards this objective. In one case, communities come together to create new economic opportunities in response to declining employment and outmigration. In the other, a longstanding cooperative ecosystem provides structures through which communities can collectively develop energy, tourism and other territorial assets.
This connection between local economic development and the ability to stay is fundamental. Territories where enterprises can develop, people can access meaningful employment, investment reaches local initiatives and value circulates within the community are better placed to offer people genuine opportunities to remain, return or build their future there.
The relevance of the Social Economy extends across many of the issues shaping the future of rural areas, including entrepreneurship, skills, access to services, energy, housing, social inclusion and the green transition. Its cross-cutting contribution makes it an important component of how rural development policies and initiatives are designed and implemented across Europe.
These issues are increasingly central to the work of Diesis Network. Through our involvement in the Rural Pact and projects such as RURAL RiSE, SEA4NEB and RUDI, we connect Social Economy organisations, local authorities and communities working on building climate resilience, addressing emerging skills needs and strengthening the conditions for long-term demographic renewal in rural areas. This work helps knowledge move between territories and brings locally grounded experience into wider European discussions.
Many of the most relevant forms of innovation are already emerging from villages, cooperatives, municipalities, social enterprises and community organisations across Europe. Strengthening the links between these experiences, learning from them and supporting their transfer to other territories can help turn local solutions into broader approaches for rural development.
Join the conversation
The Rural Pact Support Office Good Practice Webinar on 17 September 2026 will explore how rural businesses can contribute to a more competitive and resilient Europe, including through better access to finance, stronger business support and locally rooted business models. Gianluca Pastorelli, Executive President of Diesis Network, will contribute to the final stakeholder discussion on rural competitiveness and economic diversification.
The broader challenge lies in creating the conditions for these initiatives to become part of a wider territorial transformation. If the Right to Stay is about giving people a genuine choice about where to build their lives, rural development depends on stronger connections between businesses, communities and public authorities, supported by policies and investment that allow locally rooted solutions to grow and endure. The Social Economy has an important role to play in this process, helping to anchor economic activity in local communities, strengthen cooperation and ensure that more value remains within the territory.
Experiences across the Diesis Network show that many of these solutions are already taking shape. The challenge now is to connect them, strengthen their impact and create the conditions for Social Economy organisations and rural communities to contribute to shaping their own futures, which is how we aim to contribute with our initiatives.
Making the Right to Stay a reality means ensuring that rural territories can offer people the opportunities, services, connections and quality of life that make staying a genuinely attractive choice.