TALLINN, 29 June 2015 - The National Audit Office analysed distribution of LEADER funding, which is financed from the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development and aimed at the development of rural areas, and which supports a variety of activities from enterprise to the development of village life. Entrepreneurs, local authorities, non-profit organisations and others are eligible for support.
The National Audit Office concluded that the LEADER programme has taken off well in Estonia. Local Action Groups have been active and it is almost impossible to find a place in rural areas that has not received support from the programme. Over 7400 projects were implemented with LEADER funding in the previous support period of 2007-2013. More than 3200 persons received support.
According to the data collected by the Ministry of Agriculture, the output and performance indicators of the objectives set by the state, have been exceeded several times over in many cases. The figures to be reported to the European Commission are good and suggest that the programme can be considered a success.
However, the National Audit Office found some problems as well – for example, the selection of projects to be supported should be more transparent and clear reasons should be given why one project receives money and another one doesn’t. The jobs created, which is an important indicators in measuring the success of the programme, are sometimes problematic. Monitoring data show that a number of a jobs has been created, but the annual reports of the analysed undertakings indicate that the jobs created during the implementation of the programme tend to be temporary.
In the present budget period, it is important to learn from the problems of the previous period, because the rural areas of Estonia will have even more of the programme funding to use until 2020 – ca 90 million euros instead of 86 million euros.
Toomas Mattson
Head of Communication Service, National Audit Office
+372 640 0777
+372 513 4900
[email protected]
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www.riigikontroll.ee
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Posted:
6/25/2015 3:00 PM
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Last Update:
6/29/2015 12:56 PM
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Last Review:
6/29/2015 12:56 PM