Partnership for rural Europe Czech experiences in the rural development   On 1 January, the widely announced and very popular Instrument for Pre-accession Aid (IPA) will replace the existing European financial funds Phare, SAPARD, ISPA, CARDS and other similar ones. It is to provide unity in programming, financing, monitoring and auditing of the European development aid designed for the EU candidate-countries (Croatia, Macedonia and Turkey) and the potential EU candidate-countries like Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Serbia and Montenegro. The pre-accession funds have the main goal to prepare the candidate-countries for their future membership in the European Union. The Instrument for Pre-Accession Aid (IPA), through its complexity for implementation and management will have to prepare Macedonia for future successful use of the equally complex structural and rural development funds of the European Union. However illogical it may sound, the successful practicing of the complexity is only possible via simple approaches, and the principle of “partnership” is simply the basis of the complex Europe. Promoting and cherishing partnerships for the civil society development, international exchange and contribution in the rural development through exchange and mutual support of all the interested in the rural development throughout Europe – that is the goal of the Rural Europe Partnership – PREPARE. The Rural Europe Partnership Network consists of two pan-European organizations – Forum Synergies and ECOVAST – The European Council for the Village and Small Town and nine national rural movements from Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden and Lithuania. The focus of this year’s PREPARE Conference was promotion of positive experiences of the Czech Republic in the EU accession processes, visible in the achieved results and the completely exhausted available pre-accession European funds. The Czech National Rural Observatory, The Czech Network of Local Action Groups and The Local Action Group from Moravia Buclov organized this year’s conference and the traveling workshops of the Partnership for Rural Europe from 18 to 23 June this year in the Czech Republic. The working title of the conference was “The Local action groups’ evolution and activities and their role in the rural development programes”. It reflects the current processes regarding the preparation of the national rural development programmes in the EU member countries that are to fit into the new market-oriented framework of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the European Union Grounds for Rural Development 2007 and 2013. The provision calls for all national programmes to provide support for LEADER – the local action groups as part of the programme implementers. The local action groups in the Czech Republic have mark fast development since the first local partnership and the first LAG, established in 1999. At the moment they possess a well-developed network of 139 local action groups, covering 75% of the Czech rural region. The local action groups play an important role in the rural development considering their link to the LEADER initiative with the European Union rural development strategies. The forthcoming European Union Grounds for Rural Development 2007 – 2013 based upon four strategic axes points out LEADER as an instrument for horizontal distribution of the funds up the other three vertical axes. LEADER’s goal is to build the local employment and diversity capacities and it is a horizontal strategy that unites the remaining three axes: improving the competitiveness of the agriculture and forestry departments, promoting the environment and the countryside and improving the quality of life and diversification of the rural economy. The local action groups are in accordance with the LEADER basic characteristics: territorial approach, bottom-up approach, local partnership, innovation, multi-sector integration, inter-territorial or transnational cooperation, building networks and decentralized management and financing. The Czech experiences on the process of establishing the local action groups and their operation were shared through the traveling workshops. The visits that the traveling workshops paid to several local action groups, provided positive answers to the following questions: Can the visited LAG be considered an effective partnership between the public, the private and the civil sector?; Have the LAG included and animated the local inhabitants?; Do the LAG really contribute to improving the social policy, the economy and the environment and countryside? To following topics have been discussed at this yea’s PREPARE conference: national rural strategies in several countries, developing and strengthening the partnership between the government, the private and the civic sector; LEADER-type structures and networks; the role of the governments and the NGOs in the realization of effective rural development programmes; how to influence the national decision-making processes regarding the development programmes; incorporating the LEADER-philosophy and methodology in the national programmes; lobbying by regional, national and EU authorities. The positive Czech experiences in the rural development seen from Macedonian perspective January 2007 and the new Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA) 2007 – 2013, impose several important recommendations: -          establishing a national rural development forum as the promoter of the rural communities’ interests in Macedonia and NGO partner in creating the national rural development strategy; -          better informing on the need to create LEADER- partnerships on local level; -          building local structure and capacities for supporting the rural development programmes.   Miodrag Kolikj, Development department - MCIC