This volume contains the first results of a research that INEA, as part of the National Rural Network and in collaboration with the company Contesti, is carrying on in order to examine the main dynamics of cooperation adopted by the Local Action Groups (LAGs) during the planning and implementation of the interventions.

The research was designed with the aim to provide a comprehensive experience that LAGs have experienced – during the various stages of the programming of EU funds – as part of territorial cooperation, considering the latter in a broader sense, other than the Leader. The volume is divided into three parts. The first describes the evolution of cooperation in EU policies in its wide sense, in the Leader approach in its strict sense. 
The analysis of the trend of the LAGs to the territorial cooperation in the field of Leader and extra-Leader represents the core of the second part of the work. It contains the main results on the 331 projects surveyed.

The approach used is in itself innovative since the level of participation of LAGs in the planning and implementation of cooperation projects in different stages of programming has been measured through the setting-up of many indicators which have been created ad hoc. The third part is entirely devoted to the main news contained in the Community programming, after 2013, in the field of territorial cooperation. Starting from the main problems faced so far by the Leader cooperation, we have tried to highlight some of the measures that could be taken to avoid that the same problems, so far encountered, occur again.

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