Starting a Business Through LEADER as a Means of Combatting Rural Depopulation. Obstacles that Prevented Women and Young People from Doing So

The key role played by LEADER will feature highly in any evaluation of changes in rural Europe over the last 30 years, especially in terms of the implementation of a new methodology in the design of policies that would effectively stimulate rural development. This explains why there is such a huge body of literature on this subject. At the same time, however, little research has been done on the reasons why some projects that embarked on the LEADER grant application procedure were ultimately not carried out with LEADER funds. This study seeks to discover the reasons behind the non-execution of what we refer to as “failed projects”, by applying a qualitative methodology centred on in-depth interviews with self-employed businesspeople who promoted projects of this kind. Within this group, we differentiated between age, sex and the area in which they planned to set up their business. The results highlight that the most frequent cause of failure was economic difficulties, which are analysed from different perspectives. Those interviewed were also severely critical of the work of the LAGs. Criticisms were particularly strong amongst young people and young women in particular. We also observed differences in the causes of failure between the areas where population is growing or declining, although we were unable to establish a clear pattern linking these causes and the areas in which the promoters planned to invest.