Nikolaos Kalyviotis (p), Raquel Langarita

Greta Mockevičienė

Contract management is a complex and multifaceted concept with various approaches and interpretations found in literature. These differences arise from the diverse experiences, attitudes, and viewpoints of managers. A possible way to define successful contract management is ensuring that “contractual obligations are met”, thereby achieving project objectives in terms of cost, time, and quality.
Several researchers have examined public-private partnership projects in countries experiencing economic crises. They all identified that the most critical contractual issues revolve around financial aspects, government policies affecting the projects, economic conditions, and project relationships. Similar risks noticed in developing countries.
This research aims to explore the contract management processes from a financial perspective, in countries affected by economic crises. Thus, the research question is: "What is the management strategy for public-private projects in countries facing economic crises?". The specific objectives of the paper are to identify what information is required for evaluating a public-private partnership project, and to assess contract management strategies. The research explores contract management through the method "networks and cohorts", a qualitative research method used to understand relationships and group dynamics over time. The propose is to evaluate contract allocation and potential bias within the contract.

Greta Mockevičienė (p)

Mária Vavrúšová

The European Union aims to reduce regional disparities and promote economic
growth through substantial investment among its member states. Despite major
investments, the impact of EU financial support on regional convergence remains
unclear. The authors employed a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) to analyze
the assessed impact and identify assessment gaps in evaluation of EU financial
support on regional convergence, based on 33 articles published between 2012 and
2024. The findings reveal that the impact on regional convergence is often considered merely a spillover effect in the examined papers. Key findings suggest the
need for more granular analyses of individual funds, such as the European Social
Fund (ESF), and their targeted assessment in areas such as unemployment, social
inclusion, education, and public services. Existing research predominantly focuses
on NUTS-2 level regions, leaving NUTS-3 level unexplored. Future prospects:
to assess the impact of individual funds rather than aggregated allocations on
regional convergence, such as the impact of European Social Fund (ESF) investments on regional convergence by aiming to analyze specific target areas; to
develop an economic specification that incorporates terms for fund allocations,
the corresponding target areas, and their interactions, to assess the influence of
these factors on reducing regional disparities through target areas rather than
through expenditure effects; focus on smaller regions, such as the NUTS-3 level.

Mária Vavrúšová (p), Katarína Vitálišová , Anna Vaňová, Darina Rojíková

Daniela Storti

Global challenges and environmental changes emphasize the need for sustainable development and effective management of biosphere reserves. These areas represent a unique link between humans and nature, requiring intelligent governance to ensure biodiversity conservation while respecting the needs of local communities. The main goal of the paper is to identify key features of participatory governance ecosystem in the biosphere reserves as specific type of territories that in unique way lined the nature and man. The research is based on theoretical concepts of governance and participatory management and their practical application. The empirical part includes the results of a questionnaire survey conducted among 26 European biosphere reserves from 15 countries. The survey assessed participatory governance mechanisms, stakeholder engagement, and strategic planning methods. Findings indicate that 88% of biosphere reserves actively implement participatory governance, with key stakeholders including local communities, municipalities, research institutions, and environmental organizations. The study confirms the importance of participatory governance for the sustainable development of biosphere reserves, recommending a combination of traditional and digital stakeholder engagement methods. The findings provide valuable insights for policymakers and managers in developing strategies that support ecological and social sustainability in biosphere reserves.

Daniela Storti (p), Michela Ascani, Giovanni Barbieri, Luca Fraschetti, Rita Iacono

Jean-Eudes Beuret

In February 2025 the European Commission has published the Communication on ‘The Road to the next Multiannual Financial Framework', outlining the key policy and budgetary challenges that will shape the design of the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) and more importantly the policies it should support. Among the central themes of the ongoing discussion on policies priorities at EU level there are the demographic challenge, the reduction of inequalities between regions and the urban-rural divide, as well as the improvement of policy integration through the strengthening of the place-based approach.

In this framework, the aim of our contribution is to identify the main conceptual strands of local development theories from the past twenty years, to explore the scenarios associated with them in terms of geographical inequalities, and to highlight their key policy implications. Another objective is to reassess the experience of two emerging policy initiatives in Europe targeting the integrated development of rural areas suffering from depopulation - specifically of the National Strategy for Inner Areas (SNAI) in Italy and the Law to combat depopulation in Castilla la Mancha in Spain - in light of recent developments in local development theories, with the goal of identifying the factors that most influence their outcomes based on the conceptual framework emerging from our review.

The review of local development conceptualizations is conducted through a literature review from 2000 onwards, using data from WoS and Scopus. Additionally, an empirical analysis of the SNAI in Italy and of the Law to combat depopulation in Castilla la Mancha in Spain is performed.

The results of this study highlight the need to redefine current policy paradigms and allow for the identification of new intervention models. These models are characterized by a greater reliance on collective and co-design approaches, as well as new alliances between local communities, public institutions, competence centers, research bodies, third-sector organizations, and other relevant actors at the national and regional levels, following a multi-scalar approach.

References
Barca F. et al. (2012). «The case for regional development intervention. Place-based versus place-neutral approaches», in Journal of Regional Science, Vol. 52, No. 1, pp. 134-152. DOI: 101111/j.1467-9787.2011.00756.x

Capello R. (2011). «Location, Regional Growth and Local Development Theories», in Aestimum, 58, Giugno 2011:1-25

McGregor, J. A., & Pouw, N. (2017). Towards an economics of well-being. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 41(4), 1123-1142.

Jean-Eudes Beuret (p), Adeline Bas, Annaig Oiry

Nikolaos Kalyviotis

In France, the development of offshore wind farms is encountering difficulties of social acceptance, with varied, conflicting and/or cooperative interactions with professional fishing. What are the determinants of the trajectories and levels of acceptance of offshore wind farms by professional fishermen? What are the consequences of these levels and of collaborative and/or conflictual trajectories? To answer these questions, a comparative analysis was carried out on six wind farm projects as case studies on the Atlantic and Channel-North Sea coasts: Courseulles sur Mer, Dieppe Le Tréport, Fécamp, Groix Belle-Île, Saint-Brieuc, Saint-Nazaire. As a result, we identified and prioritized key variables in the acceptance of the project by professional fishermen: the identity of the area (especially the place of fishing in this local identity), the local dynamics of resources and fishing effort, path dependency with regard to previous projects and/or consultations, proximity between representatives and those represented, the quality of dialogue and the direct link between the developer and the fishermen, technological choices, and the management of unforeseen events and trust during the construction phase. We then analyzed the levels and trajectories of acceptance. We observe several ideal types. These are linear trajectories, with either continuous rejection, or continuous acceptance but subject to conditions and pressure. These are breaking trajectories: a turning point marks the transition from cooperation to conflict. The shape of the trajectories and the determinants of turning points or inflections were analyzed. This leads to operational deductions (prevention and treatment of conflictuality) and then theoretical ones: the place based strategies to be developed, and then the dynamic nature of the levels of acceptance and their effects are discussed.