The Leader Funding of Well-Being in Northeast Region of Romania

The aim of this article is to analyze the impact of the LEADER approach on the welfare related services in a specific area, the Northeast Region (NE region) of Romania. Promoting the well-being of citizens is a constant goal of the European policy and it is also a constant preoccupation of governments due to the subjectivism of the problem. The social and cultural services are an area that brings to the table mostly long-term benefits. This is the main reason that makes them difficult to analyze under the terms of numeric indices. The question that needs to be asked is whether the Social Welfare contributes that much to the rural development that it undertakes the risks and costs of the LEADER approach. Being a bottom-up approach, LEADER, consists of the vision of the Local Action Group’s management, guided by the National Rural Program, but fully adapted to the distinct local social, economic and environmental problems. The acronym “LEADER” comes from the French phrase Liaison Entre Actions de Développement de l’Économie Rurale, which translates links between the rural economy and development actions. The National Rural Development Program (NRDP) is not addressed particularly on social or cultural development; therefore, the Local Action Groups did not allocate a great amount of funds that could create a measurable impact on the indices of socio-economic development. Is the well-being of the citizen significantly improved by the EU fundings through the LAG’s by bringing into their villages access to basic education, sportive activity or medical care?