who we are

APURE – Association for the European Rural Universities - is a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) whose members are individuals and organisations from 15 European countries and a American University.

APURE is directed by an International Administration Council presided by a Portuguese personality and has a changeable geographic representation.

APURE was established in Paris in 1988 ruled by the French statute of non profit making associations in order to contribute, within the framework of the principles defined by the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Men and of Citizens (1948), to develop the network of actors in the rural world, particularly through the sessions of the European Rural Universities (ERU).

Also created to improve the principles of Popular Education, APURE is a wide open, convivial and non-formal organisation that practices the exchange of practical knowledge issued from experience as the main handspike of the reinforcement of specific abilities to the development of the rural world. 

"European Rural University is the college coming out from its walls to live the quotidian reality of the rural world. 

The actors of the rural world that release themselves from their everyday life to apprehend it with scientific methods and instruments are the European Rural University.

The European Rural University valorises the exchanges and solitaries between the academic knowledge and "the knowledge of experience", the reflection and the practices.”