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. We have also published […]
The 40th anniversary of OECD’s ILE/LEED programme: Lessons for the future
This document was written by Ron Gass for the 40th Anniversary of the Local Employment Initiatives Programme (ILE) and the Local Employment and Economic Development Programme (LEED). The anniversary was celebrated at the OECD Local Development Forum held in Cork, Ireland on 15th-17th June 2022. Mr Gass was OECD’s Director of Social Affairs, Manpower and […]
Handbook of Territorial and Local Development Strategies launch
Inspiring experiences and future opportunities The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) has recently published a “Handbook of Territorial and Local Development Strategies”. It is addressed to both managing authorities and to strategy owners and other local stakeholders involved in the design and implementation of CLLD, ITI or other territorial instruments, especially in non-urban areas. […]
RSA research funding opportunities
The Regional Studies Association (RSA) provides a range of research funding opportunities to suit different career stages. Forthcoming grant and award deadlines: 2022 Small Grant on Pandemics, Cities, Regions & Industry This scheme aims to support a discrete piece of regional studies and/or regional science research on the impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) on regions, […]
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 governance of the Rural Pact and gather commitments for the achievement of […]
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 (ÖIR); Maria Toptsidou, Kai Böhme (Spatial Foresight). Its executive summary is reproduced below. The […]
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 “Community-Led Local Development – giving value to coastal landscapes […]
Rural Europe – European Parliament event
Book Launch on the future of Rural Europe with Special Guests. This hybrid event on 7 June 2022, 16:30-18:30 CEST live from the European Parliament, with physical participation in room WEISS N3.5, with interpretation available in English and French. It marked the launch of the new book Rural Europe Takes Action – No more business […]
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 so on, and new challenges arising from the […]
Evaluation study on the ENRD and NRNs’ contribution to the implementation of the EU Rural Development policy
DG AGRI has commissioned consultants to carry out an evaluation study aimed to assess how and to what extent the ENRD and the NRNs contributed to the implementation of the EU Rural Development policy in the 2014-2020 programming period. As part of this study, four surveys were designed to obtain inputs into the networks’ results […]
LDnet webinar on ‘Local Development – Lessons for the future from recent research and practice’
LDnet was for the second year a partner in the RSA’s ‘Regions in Recovery’ e-Festival, RinR22 – see below for more information. As part of RinR22 we organised a special session (Ref: SS 23) on 24 March 2022 focusing on bridging research, policy and practice in local development. The recording of the LDnet session can […]
The ‘Debate on the future of local development and LDnet’s strategy’- the full recording
The Annual Assembly of LDnet took place online on Wednesday 2 February 2022. It was attended by 40 practitioners and researchers and included a lively debate on the future of local development and LDnet’s strategy with contributions from many of the participants. The full recording of the debate is now available at this LINK. The […]