The long-awaited special report of the European Court of Auditors on LEADER and CLLD has been published. The overall message from the ECA is that "LEADER and community-led local development facilitates local engagement but additional benefits still not sufficiently demonstrated". We present below the Executive Summary and the Conclusions and Recommendations and plan to offer a review of the report shortly. To see the full report click … Continue Reading
Events & activities
European Rural Parliament, 12-15 September 2022, Kielce
The 5th European Rural Parliament 2022 will take place from 12 to 15 September 2022 in Kielce, Poland. The full programme of this event and further information are available HERE. … Continue Reading
Smart Rural 21 Project – Final Conference: 17-18 October 2022, Gdansk
The conference will take place on 17-18 October 2022 in Gdansk (Poland) and will present the final outcomes of the Smart Rural 21 Project that are the result of intensive collaboration with rural communities and other relevant stakeholders across Europe to realise Smart Villages on the ground. More … Continue Reading
Third Joint EU Cohesion Policy Conference: 14-16 November 2022, Zagreb
Green, Digital, Inclusive and Fair: How can Cohesion Policy rise to the new territorial challenges? Third Joint EU Cohesion Policy Conference 14-16 November 2022, Zagreb, Croatia The RSA is organising the Third EU Cohesion Policy conference in partnership with the European Commission, DG Regio and the … Continue Reading
Rural Pact: European and local leaders join forces to make local communities stronger
The Rural Pact conference, 15-16 June 2022, brought together EU, national, and regional politicians along with local authorities, social and economic stakeholders in a participatory event that reflected the rural vision’s ambition and bottom-up character. It sought to engage participants in designing the … Continue Reading
CLLD – Giving value to coastal landscapes from the bottom up
On 27 May an event organised by the Chair of Landscape Architecture of the Estonian University of Life Sciences, within the series of open seminars “Exploring Landscape Boundaries”, offered an interesting opportunity for an exchange between research and practice in local development. In the seminar on … Continue Reading
Articles
CLLD country profile: France
This new country profile, the 23rd in this LDnet series on CLLD in Europe, offers an overview of CLLD in France in the 2014-2020 period and beyond: local development approach, use of EU funds, number of LAGs, achievements so far, barriers encountered, national specificities - May 2022Main author: Yves … Continue reading
CLLD country profile: Denmark
This new country profile, the 22nd in this LDnet series on CLLD in Europe, offers an overview of CLLD in Denmark in the 2014-2020 period and beyond: local development approach, use of EU funds, number of LAGs, achievements so far, barriers encountered, national specificities - February 2022Main author: … Continue reading
CLLD country profile: Ireland
This new country profile, the 21st in this LDnet series on CLLD in Europe, offers an overview of CLLD in Ireland in the 2014-2020 period and beyond: local development approach, use of EU funds, number of LAGs, achievements so far, barriers encountered, national specificities. January 2022Main author: Brendan … Continue reading
COP26: Social innovation and just transition to climate neutrality
How social innovation contributes to just transitions to climate neutrality A side event at the COP 26 in Glasgow, organised on 10.11.2021 by the James Hutton Institute, Aberdeen, Scotland/UK The James Hutton Institute, UK, lead partner of the HORIZON 2020 research project SIMRA (Social Innovation in … Continue reading
CLLD in Europe: country profiles & EU-wide analyses
This LDnet initiative aims to present in a systematic and succinct way how local development is implemented in different EU member states, as explained in the introduction CLLD in Europe: An initiative of LDnet. We have now published 22 CLLD country profiles for Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, … Continue reading
The ENSAMBLE project: Expertise and Networking to Sustain Actions in Med through Blue and Local Economy
Engaging local communities to boost the blue economy in the Mediterranean is the main goal of the ENSAMBLE project. Coordinated by the Italian FLAG "Costa degli Etruschi" for the Tuscany Region, the project partnership involves an innovative French cooperative based in the Mediterranean (Petra Patrimonia … Continue reading
Update: Implementing cohesion policy funds through multi-Fund CLLD
Community-led Local Development (CLLD) was introduced in the 2014-20 programme period and is based on the well-established LEADER tool. While LEADER is distinctly rural, co-funded by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD), CLLD allows Member States to make use of up to four different ESI … Continue reading
PUBLICATIONS
Rural proofing – a foresight framework for resilient rural communities
This report for the European Committee of the Regions aims at identifying the mainstreaming potentials of existing rural proofing methodologies and territorial impact assessment methodologies in the EU policy process.It was written by Roland Gaugitsch, Isabella Messinger, Wolfgang Neugebauer, Bernd Schuh … Continue reading
Rural Europe Takes Action
This new book by ARC2020 and Forum Synergies - Rural Europe Takes Action - offers incisive and inclusive proposals for political and practical rural action to address the ongoing challenges of the transition towards a more resilient agriculture, a circular economy, a more inclusive rural infrastructure and … Continue reading
Towards a Brussels Citizens’ Assembly
"En Question" is the quarterly journal of "Centre Avec", an association located in Brussels aiming at promoting the common good and citizen engagement. The journal addresses ecology, democracy and interculturality with a view to encouraging action for social justice. In its June 2021 issue, the journal … Continue reading
URBACT Transfer Guide – Social Participative Model using Volunteerism
The network “Volunteering Cities” has decided to develop this Transfer Guide with the objective of giving support to other cities that need/wish to re-visit their Social Policy Governance Model in order to set-up: Co-creation policy making, and Action Plans design processes by incorporating the … Continue reading
CLLD comparisons: ESI funding available to LAGs in different countries
How does the average ESI funding per Local Action Group (LAG) compare by Member State? This analysis is part of the CLLD in Europe initiative of LDnet, comprising CLLD country profiles and horizontal analyses (see here). We have seen that the EAFRD is the dominant ESI Fund in most EU Member States (see … Continue reading