Irish Regions Office Website

November 18, 2009

Integrated Local Development for EU-wide challenges?

Could Integrated Local Development (ILD) strategies - tackling economic, social and physical environment issues ogether - provide the most effective way of addressing strategic EU-wide challenges? A Eurocities network seminar on 3 November explored the potential for the Union to embrace and support this approach in the post 2013 funding period.

Over 60 representatives from member cities, senior officials of the European Institutions, and external experts shared their views and overwhelmingly came to the conclusion that this approach presents unquestionable benefits and efficiencies. A key added value aspect was felt to be the breaking down of 'silo thinking' in policy development, governance and service delivery by encouraging synergies, pooling of resources and joint initiatives between sectors and across administrative boundaries. A second was that it offers an informed means to optimise the effectiveness of interventions thanks to local expertise and experience of needs and opportunities.

From a purely EU perspective, this localised character was considered to offer great visibility to actions which could in turn improve public understanding of strategic European objectives if clear links were made to the means of delivery. Delegates also pointed out that the norms of EU funding coordination (relatively long-term timescales; stakeholder participation in planning and implementation; impact monitoring and evaluation etc.) naturally lend themselves to ILD approaches and have already contributed to capacity-building in many local and regional administrations. Interesting examples profiled from cities with experience in this field included Malmo's strategic combination of different EU funds to address different aspects within the same overall plan and the Hungarian approach of using the design of integrated city plans as a prerequisite for receiving Structural Funding.

A full proposal for a pan-European ILD approach to addressing common challenges in a coordinated yet distinctive way will be developed by Eurocities and transmitted to the Commission over the coming months.

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Posted by iroronan at November 18, 2009 10:09 AM