Are Rural Stakeholder Needs Compliant with the Targets of the Europe 2020 Strategy? Text Mining Analysis of Local Action Group Strategies from Two Polish Regions

Abstract

The 1990s saw a considerable facilitation of the concept of area-based cooperation between stakeholders from the public, economic and social sectors in the European Union (EU) with regard to local resource management. EU support programmes have given rise to community-based partnerships referred to as Local Action Groups (LAGs), in which the stakeholders involved formulate local development strategies, the implementation of which is subsequently made possible through the external financial support of EU funds. This paper illustrates an attempt to assess the extent to which local strategies are consistent with the EU's Europe 2020 strategy, using the example of 27 LAGs from two Polish provinces. Text mining and content analysis are two methods employed herein. The analysis served to establish that the dominant issues for rural areas, that are correspondent to the Europe 2020 strategy, revolve around increasing employment, educating local communities and combating poverty through the use of social inclusion methods, with much less attention dedicated to the issues of greenhouse gas emission reduction and renewable energy development. The strategies in question emphasise innovation with regard to planned activities, insofar as it is perceived at the local level, which usually bears no relation to methodical research and development (R&D) work