Thanks to ten years of Leader activity Finland has become one of the most prominent European countries in LAG work.

Leader activities have proven to be highly suitable for Finland as a productive way to develop rural areas, since they bring existing actors together and give them new kinds of opportunities to participate in developing their local areas.

Rapid mainstreaming

LAG work started in 1995 when Finland joined the EU and the Leader II initiative was launched. At this stage there was already a strong culture of village action in Finland, to which Leader activities were highly suited.

In the period 1996-1999 Finland had 22 Leader groups. However, there was an urgent need for LAG work on a wider scale, and this is why a corresponding national Rural Programme Based on Local Initiative (POMO) was launched outside the existing Leader areas, setting up 26 POMO groups for the period1997-1999.

The good results and experiences of Leader II and POMO led to the extension of LAG work to cover the entire country during the programme period 2000-2006, with a total of 58 LAGs. This move completed the geographical mainstreaming of the Leader method in Finland.

It is worth noting that the Rural Policy Committee (http://www.ruralpolicy.fi/en/) strongly supported the mainstreaming of the Leader approach, which was an objective from the very beginning of LAG work in Finland. This objective was formally reached in 2002.

Factors behind the extensive and rapid mainstreaming of the Leader method in Finland include:

• the network-based national rural development policy
• the viability and functional capacity of Finnish civil society

The idea of mainstreaming has also been applied in other European countries.