The current network wants to design practical and efficient plans to face demographic change and strong emigration

In Europe, the southern countries and, after 2004, the eastern countries have been the generators of large flows of emigrants to the richest northern countries or to third countries with flourishing economies. This tendency has slightly slowed down during the economic growing years in the 90’s but was reinforced during the crisis years that affected particularly the southern countries. Additionally, the fertility rate has been decreasing in almost of those countries with a double effect in the population numbers. The Region of Alto Minho, including the Municipality of Arcos de Valdevez, has achieved an economic boom in the last years due to persistent investment attraction policies and improvement of accessibility and infrastructures. On the other side the emigrated population of Arcos is more numerous than the one living in Arcos. Moreover, the mismatch of skills and jobs is hindering the employment of people that could stay in the territory instead of leaving to look for jobs. In this context, the Municipality is facing an urgent need of designing policies for attraction and retention of talents in order to be able to sustain the levels of economic growth and quality of life for all as well as to antecipate the skills needs in order to improve the necessary match. This is the reality of all cities in countries with strong emigration.