Page 3 - Economy_Local Development

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Introduction to the topic

Territorial and Local development became visible in a rather sudden way in the middle of the 1980s. It was
the result of the conjunction of particular economic (crisis of the traditional industries, widespread
emergence of the services economy), social (persistent unemployment, new social exclusion forms in the
cities) and political (decentralisation, crisis of the central Welfare State, European integration) elements.
From the mid-80s until 2000, the EU interventions were marked by continuous political effort to transform
the spontaneous phenomenon of local development into a genuine component of European economic
development, through an increasingly sophisticated and varied range of interventions, programmes and
measures. The future EU support to local development should pass the test of subsidiarity, which means
that it should clearly show that it will provide additional benefits. It has also to take into account the other
EU policies and the past experience. This leads to a set of 10 criteria:
1

● ownership and visibility,
● effectiveness and targeting issues,
● capacity building,
● innovation,
● stable financial resources,
● territorial cohesion,
● feasibility,
● low transaction costs,
● adaptability to different contexts and starting points,
● coherence with other programmes and funds.

Local development is intrinsically associated with a multidimensional concept of change bringing together
economic, social, cultural and environmental dimensions; together with a transversal dimension of
innovation. Local and territorial development help improving quality of life, supporting or accelerating
empowerment of ordinary people, developing or preserving local assets, overcoming market failures,
strengthening cohesion, and defining and delivering grass-root development projects . This report is a rapid
overview of this topic looking on four specific issues:Rural development (Chapter 1), Urban Mobility Plan
(Chapter 2), Community and Capacity building (Chapter 3), Business and Enterprise (chapter 4).

1 https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/policy/what/territorial-cohesion/