LEADER European Congress 2023: LEADER, the Rural Pact & rural-urban interaction

The 2023 European LEADER Congress took place in Brussels on 18 and 19 December 2023 at the European Parliament, the Committee of the Regions and the European Economic and Social Committee.

This Congress is the first event to bring together as many European LAGs as possible in more than 15 years. It brought together more than 600 LAG members from all over Europe, officials from the European Commission, MEPs involved in LEADER and rural development, as well as representatives of national and regional rural networks and managing authorities. Speakers included Stefan Kah, member of LDnet board.

The agenda and line up of speakers is available HERE.

WE provide below and overview of the event and some of the sessions concerning LEADER and the Rural Pact, and rural-urban interaction.

LEADER and the Rural Pact & rural-urban interaction

The LEADER Congress on 18-19 December discussed the role of rural development in shaping Europe’s future. While the first day centred on securing high-level political commitment and enable LEADER/CLLD to realise its full potential in contributing to the Rural Vision, the second day of the LEADER Congress in Brussels on 19 December 2023 gave participants the opportunity to work in a series of thematic sessions to exchange experiences and develop practical solutions around LEADER. LDnet was actively involved in two of these sessions.

LDnet President Urszula Budzich-Tabor, in her role in the Rural Pact Support Office, chaired a session focusing on “Implementation of the Rural Vision and Pact: the value for LEADER”. This session aimed to raise awareness about the Rural Vision and Pact among LEADER community, to build this community’s capacity to act as key partners of the Rural Pact at the local level, and to explore how the Rural Vision and Pact add value to LEADER and LAGs, and the role they can play in it. The session was attended by some 100 participants and involved a series of speakers providing different stakeholder perspectives. Two examples were presented of translating the Rural Pact into national and regional context: the Catalan Rural Pact and the French Rural Agenda.

Stefan Kah, LDnet board member, facilitated a session on “Developing interactions between rural and urban areas and urban CLLD”. The session aimed to explore the roles that urban areas can play in rural development processes and how rural and how rural and urban development can cross-fertilise. After an overview of state-of-play of urban CLLD, two practitioners presented their experiences of working at the crossroads of rural and urban CLLD. Monika Smetanová, manager of the rural LAG Krajina Srdce (Czechia), showed how an external factor – in this case the war in Ukraine – triggered much needed cooperation with the neighbouring town of Tábor, which until then had no interaction with its surrounding LEADER LAG. Tábor is now one of 12 Czech towns that are likely to set up their own urban LAG. This was followed by a presentation Florin Preda, urban LAG manager of Rădăuți (Romania). He is also vice president of the Romanian Association of Urban LAGs and used to be a rural LAG manager in the past. He showed the achievements of urban CLLD activities in Rădăuți, where €7 million of LAG budget was used to implement more than €18 million of total investments, e.g. in social housing and healthcare.