The place of village renewal in the system of development policies and rural support programs in Poland

In 2022, it will be 25 years since the launch of the village renewal program in the Opole Voivodeship, and thus the initiation of this process of rural development animated by the local community in Poland. The inspiration for the Opole village renewal program from 1997 was the positive experience of village renewal in Germany and Austria. In its initial phase, village renewal in Poland was a completely grassroots process with a limited territorial scope. Its wide dissemination throughout the country took place with Poland's accession to the European Union (2004) and the related availability of EU funds for rural development. In the context of a quarter of a century of functioning and development of this idea in Poland, the article reflects on the current place of village renewal in national and regional development policies and rural support programs. This issue was considered through the prism of the rooting of village renewal in rural support models, the development of provincial village renewal programs, as well as its anchoring in national and regional strategies and relations with the activities of programs financed from European funds. The conclusions were based on a query and content analysis of national literature on the subject of village renewal and strategic documents of the central and regional levels. In relation to the obtained results, village renewal in Poland - despite the involvement of rural communities and the interest of scientists and modern theoretical foundations - still occupies an insufficient place in the system of development policies. It is weakly anchored in current national and regional strategies and has been largely overshadowed by activities subsidized from EU funds, which has had an impact on the current scope of provincial village renewal programs. The position of this idea in development policies reflects a broader problem - insufficient consideration of rural priorities and perception of rural areas mainly through the prism of peripherality and marginalization.