LUCRĂRI ŞTIINŢIFICE, SERIA I, VOL. XIX (1) 107 COMMUNITY-LED LOCAL RURAL DEVELOPMENT WITHIN THE FRAME OF THE RURAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME 2007-2013 IN ROMANIA SĂLĂŞAN COSMIN 1 , JANKOVIC DEJAN 2 , BAJRAMOVIC SABAHUDIN 3 , STANKOVIC SLADJAN 4 , MOISA SEBASTIAN* 1 1 Banat's University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine "King Michael I st of Romania" from Timisoara, Faculty of Agricultural Management, Romania 2 University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Agriculture, Serbia 3 University of Sarajevo, Faculty of Agriculture, Bosnia and Herzegovina 4 Institute for Science Application in Agriculture, Serbia *Corresponding author’s e-mail: seb.moisa@gmail.com Abstract: The first consistent support framework allowing the use of specific Community- Led Local Development approaches and tools was represented by the first Rural Development Programme of Romania as member state of the EU. The Axis 4 LEADER of the programme created the premises for the aggregation of the public-private partnerships and the participatory development of their future Local Development Strategies. The delayed start and the unprepared rural actors proved a high learning and adjusting capacity reflected by the success of the implementation of contracted projects. The levels as expressed by totals of number and values of the projects are analysed in-depth searching indications of determined development directions. The findings underline the readiness and willingness of the rural actors supported by high levels of private contribution in co- financing specific investment projects. Key words: Community-Led Local Development, Local Action Groups INTRODUCTION The current paper targets the community led local rural development results and outcomes within the public support framework for the Romania’s first budgeting period as EU member state. The analysis of the general and specific support framework leads to a number of two observations: the first indicate that the only consistent support for the mentioned period is public and the second points towards the Romania’s National Rural Development Programme 2007-2013 (RDP), more specifically to the Axis 4 LEADER [1] and [4]. As general observation forms of Community-Led Local Development (CLLD) and particularly in rural development can punctually be recorded in different moments of the analysed period yet they are excluded for the focus of the present research question due to the reduced scale, limited resources and therefore lack of relevance by missing to offer national or regional availability. Although LEADER initiative is relatively old as Community Initiative for the Western Europe it reached Romania only after the first programming period as EU member state. With no prior experience at national or regional scale except isolated attempts implemented rather as pre-pilot initiatives, the setup was relatively slow becoming available only in 2010, that is two years after the RDP opening for other agricultural and rural development measures. The formal implementation was also adjusting on the run with administration learning-by-doing and with future beneficiaries completely foreign to this type of approach. This general situation can further explain why for the above-mentioned time frame the specific Axis 4 only allowed measures already contained in the RDP and refused to consider the possibility of promoting integrated projects [4]. Within this relatively rigid framework the rural micro- regions had to design and later implement specific interventions in the logic of the proposed Local Development Strategies (LDS). The quality and the capacity to respond to the specific needs and problems of the micro-regions of these LDSs represented the corner stone of the selection process for the later implemented 163 Local Action Groups (LAG) in