The Conversation About Malta’s Rural Future Needs to Start Now

Malta is approaching an important transition in how European funding will be planned and delivered, including funding affecting rural and territorial development. Yet an essential part of that transition deserves considerably more attention: when, and how, the people and organisations working directly within our communities are brought into the conversation.

This is not simply a Maltese concern. Across Europe, Member States are working through the implications of the proposed National and Regional Partnership Plans (NRPPs) for the 2028-2034 programming period. The proposed framework represents a significant change, bringing different areas of EU support under a more integrated national planning structure.

The final legislative framework is still being negotiated, and national administrations understandably cannot provide answers that do not yet exist. But uncertainty over the final rules should not prevent dialogue about needs, priorities and lessons from beginning now.

Consultation should help shape a plan, not simply react to one

In Malta, SEED Projects has sought information on the development of the NRPP and opportunities for stakeholder involvement through its role as national partner for the EU Rural Pact.

The information received to date is that Malta remains at an early preparatory stage and that stakeholder engagement will take place once relevant elements of the Plan are sufficiently developed to allow for focused and meaningful consultation.

There is logic to this approach. Stakeholders need something concrete on which to comment.

But there is another side to the equation.

If engagement begins only once the main elements have already been developed, there is a risk that stakeholders are primarily asked to react to priorities rather than help identify them. Early engagement does not require a finished Plan. It can begin with listening: What has worked? What has not? Where are communities struggling? Where do existing funding mechanisms overlap? What opportunities are currently being missed?

These are questions stakeholders can help answer before individual measures are designed.

Other countries are already experimenting with this dialogue

Malta is certainly not alone in facing this challenge. Different Member States are at different stages, and there is no single model that can simply be transplanted from one country to another.

Poland and Estonia offer useful examples of stakeholder engagement beginning while preparations for the future framework are still taking shape. Both have been highlighted through the Rural Pact's work on NRPPs for their approaches to involving rural stakeholders in the emerging planning process.

In Poland, a national ‘Rural Pact in my country’ dialogue in June brought together government representatives, Local Action Groups, civil society, businesses, researchers and citizens to discuss future rural policies and stakeholder involvement, including in the preparation of the NRPP.

These experiences are not presented as perfect models. Challenges remain, including coordination between policy sectors and overcoming top-down approaches. But they demonstrate an important point: meaningful dialogue does not have to wait until the planning process is advanced. Malta should be looking at such experiences - not to copy them, but to understand what could work at our own scale.

What we heard from Malta's Local Action Groups

On the 7th of September, SEED Projects, in its role as national partner for the Rural Pact, brought together the managers of Malta's three Local Action Groups at the Valletta Design Cluster (See Rurali map below or click here).

The purpose was partly to introduce the Rural Pact and the opportunities it provides, but the meeting quickly developed into a wider conversation about LEADER, rural investment and community-led development in Malta.

That conversation was valuable precisely because it brought together practitioners working directly with different territories and communities.

Several recurring issues emerged.

There is a need to communicate LEADER opportunities more effectively so that communities and potential beneficiaries better understand the support available to them.

There is also a wider question about how the value of LEADER - which is fundamentally based on local participation and bottom-up decision-making - is recognised within Malta's broader rural-development landscape.

Another issue concerns coordination between funding instruments. Participants discussed situations where types of interventions pioneered through locally led approaches were subsequently reflected in other nationally administered schemes. Where similar national schemes are easier for beneficiaries to access, this can unintentionally place locally managed funding mechanisms in competition with national ones.

This should not become an argument about which institution should “own” an idea.

Quite the opposite.

If an approach developed locally proves valuable enough to be adopted more widely, that can be a sign of success. But it also demonstrates why coordination, complementarity and recognition of locally generated innovation matter. National programmes and LEADER should reinforce one another rather than compete for the same beneficiaries without a clear strategic relationship.

LEADER is more than another funding scheme

This distinction is particularly important as Europe discusses the future of LEADER after 2027.

LEADER was designed around a different logic from conventional top-down funding programmes. Local Action Groups bring together public, private and civil-society actors to develop strategies based on the needs of their own territories.

The value, therefore, is not measured only by how much money is distributed.

Its value also lies in building local capacity, encouraging collaboration, identifying ideas from within communities and giving local actors some agency over their own development.

If LEADER is treated simply as another funding window, much of that added value is lost.

For a country of Malta's scale, there should be an opportunity here rather than an obstacle. Our size makes relationships between national institutions, Local Action Groups, local councils, civil society, businesses and community organisations potentially much more immediate than in considerably larger Member States.

The meeting between the three LAG managers demonstrated this. Bringing a small number of relevant people into the same room generated an exchange of experiences and common challenges that does not happen often enough.

The opportunity is still in front of us

None of this requires a fatalistic conclusion that Malta has missed the boat.

It has not.

The European framework itself is still developing. The 2028-2034 programming period has not begun, and important legislative decisions remain ahead.

That makes now a particularly useful moment to strengthen dialogue.

We should use the preparatory period to map stakeholders, listen to experience from previous programmes, examine where funding instruments complement or duplicate one another, identify territorial needs, and create channels through which rural communities can contribute before priorities become fixed.

The question should therefore not simply be: When will Malta consult on its NRPP?

A more useful question is:

"What conversations should Malta be having now so that, as the NRPP is developed, it genuinely reflects the knowledge and experience already present within our communities?"

As Malta's national partner for the EU Rural Pact, SEED Projects will continue creating spaces for those conversations and connecting Maltese stakeholders with experiences, practices and opportunities emerging elsewhere in Europe.

Because bottom-up development cannot begin at the end of the planning process.