А TERRITORIAL APPROACH FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF RURAL AREAS. CASE OF BULGARIA.

The implementation of the EU Cohesion Policy has contributed to numerous improvements and positive effects on local economies. However, it has not entirely succeeded in overcoming the economic and social disparities across territories. The article reviews the practical aspects of the implementation of the LEADER and Common local led development (CLLD) approaches in Bulgaria. It also provides a comparative analysis of both Integrated Territorial Investments (ITIs) and CLLD. The objective is to show the impact of CLLD on decreasing the economic divergence between urban and rural municipalities and to identify the main difficulties in CLLD implementation that need further improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]