CLLD – Community led local development

Over the past 20 years, the European Commission has focused on supporting developments in rural territories. For this purpose, the LEADER [1] programme was launched in 1991 with the aim of revitalising rural areas and creating jobs. In the current program period (2014-2020), the LEADER method has been extended from rural to coastal and urban areas under the banner of CLLD.

CLLD and its three key components

The CLLD is a term used by the European Commission to describe an approach that turns the traditional “top down” development policy on its head. It can be regarded as a set of development tools which focuses on the long-term potentials and needs in specific sub-regional areas in Europe.

There are three essential components of the CLLD. The first one is the existence of a local community. The activities are usually led by a community – local action groups that consist of representatives of local public and private social-economic interests such as entrepreneurs, local authorities, neighbourhood, rural associations, voluntary organisations or groups of citizens.

The second essential component concerns the local development strategies which can be summarized as action plans, demonstrating how objectives are translated into concrete projects, management, monitoring arrangements and a financial plan. In other words, it is about finding innovative ways to meet local challenges and opportunities.

A well-defined geographical territory and population are the third essential factors. The local action groups are responsible to define the actual areas and population that their strategies will cover. The definition needs to be consistent with the criteria outlined in the CLLD requirements.

The aim of CLLD

The main aim of the CLLD is to encourage local communities to address territorial and local challenges. It should also motivate the community to discover the untapped potential within communities and territories, for example by stimulating innovation or entrepreneurship and capacity for change.

By sharing experiences and expertise in the development of rural areas, community networks will be strengthened which should lead to other modes of information exchange such as publications in the related working fields.

Furthermore, the CLLD has the potential for the local community becoming influential on EU policies. It will promote community ownership by increasing participation within communities. In that way, the sense of ownership can be increased which can lead to a rising involvement in designing EU policies. In this context,

“the CLLD assist multi-level governance by providing a route for local communities to fully take part in shaping the implementation of EU objectives in all areas.” [2]

Note: This article is based on Community-led local development – Cohesion policy 2014-2020 by Europe Commission

References

[1] LEADER, French acronym, stands for “Liaison Entre Actions de Developpement de I’Economie Rurale”, means “links between the rural economy and development actions”.
[2] Europe Commission (2014). Community-led local development – Cohesion policy 2014-2020, [online] Available at: http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/docgener/informat/2014/community_en.pdf

Keywords

Cohesion policy, CLLD, community-led local development, LEADER, action groups, top-down, rural territory, entrepreneurs, community, innovation