In 2023, the number of LEADER program participants reached 52 local action groups supporting 1.14 million residents.
This was stated during the first Congress of the national LEADER network in Moldova, held in Chisinau. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, the event took place within the framework of the program "EU4Moldova: Local Communities", a landmark initiative of the European Union aimed at community development. Local and international partners, government representatives and local action groups in the country met at the congress to discuss the problems of rural community development and identify solutions for implementing changes at the local level. Andrian Digolean, State Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, who attended the event, emphasized that the LEADER program is an approach that offers new opportunities to engage citizens in active participation in rural development and to bring together economic and social aspects to improve living standards in communities. In 2023, the number of LEADER program participants reached 52 local action groups covering 492 administrative-territorial units and 811 localities, supporting 1.14 million residents. The Ministry of Agriculture recalled that since 2022, the LEADER approach in Moldova has become a National LEADER Program, administered by the Agricultural Ministry and the Agency for Intervention and Payments in Agriculture, which positions Moldova as the first and only country outside the European Union that applies the LEADER approach as a tool of state policy for rural development. The LEADER approach is an EU initiative, a rural development program launched in 1991 and aimed at supporting the development of rural areas at the local level through a bottom-up, community-led development approach. The EU has been supporting the LEADER approach in Moldova since 2016, and this initiative, which has proven to be sustainable and long-term, was transformed into a state program in June 2022. Under the launched LEADER program, Local Action Groups (LAGs) registered in Moldova receive grants of up to 5% from the National Fund for Agricultural and Rural Development. By allocating these funds from the National Fund for Agricultural and Rural Development, the state focuses on the economic and social development of the territories where local initiative groups operate, aiming to improve the quality of life in rural areas and develop new local services that meet the needs of the population, in order to stop the migration of young people from rural to urban areas, as well as their exodus abroad. Through community mobilization, rural economic development is stimulated. // 16.10.2023 - InfoMarket.
