The “Carrefour europeo delle Alpi”
The European Union’s rural information and promotion centre.
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Bringing information about Europe to the heart of rural communities
The Rural European Carrefours are information and promotion centres first set up by the European Union in 1988. The European network of rural Carrefours, coordinated by the European Commission's General Directorate for "Press and Communication" is made up of around 140 operative centres in the 15 member States, of which 19 are active in Italy.
The objective of the centres is to bring information about the European Union to the rural public. The Carrefours – from the French term for crossroads, place of meeting and exchange – are centres for the promotion of rural development, for the dissemination of information on the European Union and for laying the foundations for EU rural development programmes at a local level. They are centres of exchange and comparison, where projects are elaborated and where partners are sought for initiatives between different EU territories.
The European Carrefours are not legal entities in their own right; each centre is hosted by another structure, usually public, which already operates in the field of rural development.
Thus the "Carrefour europeo delle Alpi" is part of the Istituto Agrario S. Michele all'Adige, where it has been active since 1997.
Although it deals with all aspects of EU policy, the centre has a special interest in issues related to the mountain and to European youth programmes.
