Evaluation tools for integrated EU rural development initiatives

         The objective of this chapter is to study the utilisation of European Union resources and to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the assistance and its impact, which are becoming increasingly relevant as Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) budget constraints increase. Although the LEADER Initiative absorbs a relatively small percentage of EU Rural Development Policy funds, its innovative characteristics, combined with its Rural Development Policy (RDP) mainstreaming, are well-suited to a framework of formal evaluation procedures. Local action groups (LAGs), as the main actors in the design, monitoring and implementation of integrated local development plans, deserve special attention in this context. This chapter discusses the application of a model for evaluating the performance of the LAGs in designing and implementing the EU LEADER+ Community Initiative. The special characteristics of the initiative, such as the emphasis on territorial rural development, together with its “bottom-up” approach, lends itself to a Shift-Share Analysis (SSA) approach, a method that was initially applied in a regional analysis context. The degree of impact on the funds’ absorptive capacity by each LAG is parameterised in a regional analysis quantitative framework of the SSA, applied for the first time in the case of LEADER+, highlighting aspects relating to both internal (i.e. managerial ability) and external factors (i.e. the national planning framework of the LEADER programme). A classification of the LAGs into regional “LEADER types” is also developed, according to the estimated degree of impact of these factors.         The case of all 40 Greek LAGs operating under the third programming period was examined as soon as data became available from the national Integrated Data System, right after the completion of the LEADER+ Community Initiative implementation period (2009). Since the discussion of rural policy impacts and the fourth generation of evaluation methods are well under way, the suggested approach can also be combined with other qualitative and qualitative approaches in order to better understand the impact of the EU Rural Development Policy.      

Innovation and Modernising the Rural Economy

Evaluation tools for integrated EU rural development initiatives

The case of LEADER+