Community-led initiatives and the European Green Deal: towards transformational local development policies

On 28 November 2022, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), in collaboration with ECOLISE will host ECOLISE's main policy stakeholder event, Community-led initiatives and the European Green Deal: towards transformational local development policies, to hold conversations on about the role of communities and EU policies on the path to transformational systemic change.

This event will trigger conversations about 10 theses on what truly transformational local development policies could look like, and how community-led environmental and climate actions can be strengthened through the European Green Deal, with a focus on different initiatives such as the Rural Pact and European Climate Pact as well as existing methods and frameworks such as LEADER/ Community-led local development (CLLD).

This event will present the results of a policy consultation process facilitated by the ECOLISE network together with its core partners, which started with a kick-off session on 28 September and will be the starting point of a wider advocacy campaign in 2023.

The objective of the event is to:

-       Present the outcomes of the policy positioning process of community-led initiatives towards the European Green Deal;  

-   Enable wide-spread community-led response to the climate and ecological crisis through transformational regional and local development policies;

-   Empower the role of local communities and policies for transformational systemic change;

-   Facilitate conversations to better understand the potential and needs of community-led initiatives as change agents.