EN
Local economic development is a complex system. While searching for its objective or expression, we need to take into account several aspects and we come to the conclusion that there is no widely-accepted and acknowledged expression existing for local economic development. Most of the definitions consider it as a conscious intervene into the economy with aiming at the increase of the standard of living of the population as well as realizing sustainable economic development. However, the intervention requires the work of several players, therefore the various approaches to development allows the stepping in from different levels as well. The study is dealing with the importance of local communities in realizing success while developing their settlement/ micro-region. It is not to be forgotten to involve the local communities in the local development projects, because if one do not do it, they might be even against developments which are basically necessary, meet their demand and serve the increase in their standard of living. This “human” factor cannot be replaced by financial means if it is missing from the local development process, so it is extremely important to find the perfect tools to encourage, motivate and control them. In the case of Hungary, knowing the behavior, attitude, openness of Hungarian people, this task seems to be even more difficult. Unfortunately, based on the data on projects realized so far, it can be stated that in many cases the local players have been the only obstacles of the developments.