Rafael Llamas, mayor of Montilla and president of the Rural Development Group (GDR) Campiña Sur Cordobesa and the Spanish Rural Development Network (REDR), has called to "safeguard" the funding for the Leader program in the upcoming European budgets. The objective is to prevent the dismantling of a territorial structure built over 35 years.
The REDR, representing nearly 200 rural entities across Spain, proposes a minimum mandatory reserve of 5 percent of financial resources allocated to rural areas. This would amount to approximately 1.3 billion euros for the 2028-2034 period.
This demand comes at a crucial time for the negotiation of the next European Union Multiannual Financial Framework. The president of REDR warns that the new architecture of Leader funds could dilute resources for rural development and compromise the continuity of the local participation model.
Llamas has defended the role of the entities implementing these programs in rural towns, emphasizing that "Local Action Groups have been the true protagonists of the greatest transformations experienced by the Spanish rural environment in recent decades." He considers that "dismantling a network that holds 35 years of accumulated social capital is not a simple administrative change: it is an irreversible historical error."
In addition to funding, REDR requests that the program maintain a mandatory and differentiated status throughout the European Union. The organization highlights its contribution to employment, entrepreneurship, population retention, and the strengthening of the socioeconomic fabric.
The third demand is to maintain Local Action Groups as the territorial structure responsible for implementing Leader. "These groups bring together town councils, small and medium-sized enterprises, cooperatives, and associations of rural women and youth to participate in designing the future of their municipalities," explains Llamas, warning that reducing "their function to mere administrative processing would nullify the value of the experience accumulated over 35 years."
For her part, the first vice-president of REDR, Juana María Martínez, emphasizes the social and economic results of the program, stating that "Leader is the only European policy with a human face, designed from the bottom up, that brings Europe directly to the citizen."
