On May 7th, a large majority in the 144th Plenary session of the European Committee of the Regions adopted the Opinion on Experiences and lessons learned by regions and cities during the COVID-19 crisis.
We would like to draw your special attention to article 36, which directly refers to Leader:
“THE EUROPEAN COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS
(…)
36. is convinced that in order to tackle the challenges of the COVID-19 crisis in rural areas, it is useful to support and strengthen the LEADER initiative and to draw attention in all Member States to the development of relevant community and business activities, to step away from the narrow focus on agriculture and to explore the concept of smart villages as a way to enable more flexibility. There is a need to adapt the administrative requirements in such a way that volunteers or groups of residents can also participate in the programme. A more flexible bottom-up approach will also be necessary to find a balance between solving short-term needs of local people and introducing innovation on a local level. This can be done for example by linking the Local Action Groups to networks of innovators;”
The full text of the document you will find in the Attachment
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