• The 33 selected candidates compete for three jury awards and one popular vote prize.
• The three best candidates will be presented on October 2 at the LEADER 2024 European Congress (Poitiers, France).

For several weeks now, Spanish and European Local Action Groups ( LAGs ), true drivers of rural development in their territories, have seen an open opportunity to demonstrate and see the quality of their LEADER projects rewarded : the “ELARD 2024 Cooperation Awards” .

The organizer is the European LEADER Partnership for Rural Development ( ELARD )—an independent entity comprised of 29 Member States and more than 2,500 LAGs—which carries out non-profit initiatives to improve the quality of life in rural areas and repopulation through sustainable and integrated local development.

The jury selected by this organization has chosen 33 LEADER projects to win the award. Spain ultimately has 10 candidates :

1. Mining Land (Aragon, Castile and Leon, Galicia and La Rioja)
2. Aragon Infoenergy (Aragon)
3. Birding Aragón (Aragón)
4. Cowocat Rural (Catalonia)
5. +Companies +Employment +Rural (Castilla y León)
6. SENIOR SPACES, Seniors and Participatory Local Development (Extremadura)
7. “Land use planning from agricultural land through the system of exchanges” ( Galicia)
8. Murcia Rural (Murcia Region)
9. ODISSEU: Return of young people to rural areas (Catalonia)
10. EUROCHEF II, “a chef in the countryside” (from the original A Chef at the Rural , in English) (Galicia)

Awards and popular vote

The jury has classified the awards into three different categories, but there will also be a fourth "People's Choice Award" based on user votes cast up until September 23 .

Apart from Spain, representatives include Germany, Belgium, Croatia, Slovenia, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and two transnational cooperation projects: one from Belgium, Scotland, and Romania, and another from Belgium and the Netherlands.

These candidates are public and private beneficiaries of the LEADER program for the 2014-2022 programming period. The awards ceremony will take place on the final day of the LEADER 2024 European Congress , a large-scale event bringing together LAGs from across Europe and some international countries on October 2 and 3 in Poitiers, France. This is "a perfect opportunity to talk about cooperation," says ELARD, "and to exchange ideas and discuss each group's cooperation projects."