Once it joins the European Union, Croatia will be able to draw EUR 333 million from European funds each year for the development of rural areas, which is a total of 91 percent of Croatia's territory, the head of the Department for Managing EU Rural Development Programmes in the Croatian Agriculture, Fisheries and Rural Development Ministry, Tugomir Majdak, said on Wednesday.
Majdak gave a talk in Split on the implementation of the Rural Development Programme (LEADER) in Croatia. He said that so far a total of 25 local partnership have been formed in Croatia, namely Local Action Groups (LAG), comprised of representatives of local governments, the private sector and the civil society which include 16,600 square kilometres of rural area or 715,000 people.
According to IPARD guidelines, LAG area in Croatia is a rural area with more than 5,000 and less than 150,000 people, including cities with the population of less than 25,000.
LEADER is a bottom - up method of delivering support for rural development through implementing local development strategies. Support, awarded by Local Action Groups (LAGs), is aimed at local projects with a wide community benefit that show an element of originality or experimentation where possible, and complement other activities within the local development strategy.
The implementation of the LEADER programme in Croatia is envisaged as part of the pre-accession IPARD programme.
