The Moselle Valley is one of the great river landscapes of Western Europe, with a unique natural and cultural heritage. The part of the valley that lies on the border between France, Luxembourg and Germany reflects the diversity of the Greater Region through its history and international links. For some years now, the Upper Moselle Valley has been facing the challenge of reconciling the current development dynamics with the preservation of its rural landscape.
In order to meet this challenge and to strengthen the functional cross-border connections between Luxembourg, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland, the ministries responsible for regional planning have developed the Upper Moselle Valley development concept in cooperation with regional and municipal actors on the basis of the guiding principles defined in the EOM concept.
The LEADER subsidy measure is characterised by a "bottom-up approach", i.e. the people on site decide about the local integrated rural development strategy (LILE) for their region within the LEADER action group (LAG). They choose the projects to be subsidised based on transparent and objective selection criteria. To make rural spaces in Rhineland-Palatinate future-capable, the funding period of 2014 to 2020 has sustainable projects and processes at the focus of promotion in twenty selected LEADER regions. Beyond this, the innovation and economic power in the regions, intermunicipal cooperation, tourism and nature protection are to be strengthened. The goal is achieving a sustainable structural further development of the LEADER regions by developing and trying out answers to urgent challenges of our time. This includes, in particular, demographic change, countering climate change, preservation and creation of jobs, environmental and resource protection.
LEADER permits participation of rural spaces and their populations in the subsidy backdrop of the EU, thereby also contributing to letting the EU goals reach rural spaces and enabling them to contribute to the Europe 2020 strategy, while also increasing acceptance and citizen proximity of the EU.
