15 páginas, un mapa, 6 tablas y una figura ; Large Scale Grazing Systems (LSGSs) in Europe are extensive systems of grassland management, which have developed from the interaction of historical background, human behaviour and natural resources, and are mainly located in the Less Favoured Areas (LFAs). LSGSs currently face competing threats towards intensification and/or abandonment but, at the same time, they harbour a significant part of European nature values. Socio-economic driving forces of land abandonment and intensification are poorly addressed. The current system assumes that these LSGSs are inherently uneconomic and only payments for the potential delivery of environmental services and side line activities are the source of continuity and justification of support. Our conceptual approach, however, is based on the assumptions that endogenous development and targeted policy schemes cannot be disregarded. A framework profile is provided for the identification and description of European LSGSs where regeneration plans can be more cost-effective. Under this conceptual approach, operational tools such as pastoral strategies for survival and system-specific management alternatives can be devised for interplay of environmental and socio-economic functions, facilitating interdisciplinary research within and across systems. From the empirical perspective, we show how the trend of abandonment of LSGS in the last 60 years is spread over different regions of Europe, how management alternatives are designed for six separate LSGS, and how beneficial management alternatives, environmental functions and side line activities cited by experts on an additional sample of 46 European LSGS are grouped by type of action. We conclude that the continuity of LSGSs in the European Union (EU) may require a new and sustainable intensification path with new farming models and farming categories as far removed from the conventional intensification path as from the low-input, nature reserve and generalised policy support paradigms. Beneficial management with key actions can be a sensible rationale for specific and dynamic support to LSGS in the next CAP reform post-2013, time of stressing budgetary conditions. ; The author wishes to thank partners of the EU-funded LACOPE project (Contract EVK2-CT-2002-00150) for discussion and implementation of the LSGS concept and descriptions of the six LACOPE case studies, and to Xavier Fernández Santos in drafting the map. The author wishes to thank the following representative experts for their contributions in filling out the 46 questionnaires on the territorial identity of European LSGS and further narrative comments and explanations to their responses: Brendan Duncan (case study N° 1 in the map), Norbert Röder (2), Ewa Tyran (3), Juan Antonio Valladares (4), Niklas Labba (5), Teresa D. Soares and Augusta Costa (6), Nathaniel Page and Razvan Popa (7), Sally Huband (8), Geza Nagy (9), Rosario Fanlo (10), Suzana Kratovalieva (11), Nikos Theodoridis (12), Senija Alibegovic and Muhamed Brka (13), Anna Sidiropoulou and Vasilios P. Papanastasis (14), Pius Hofstetter (15), Andy Guy and Ian Condliffe (16), Giovanni Peratoner (17), Paride D’Ottavio (18), Lucia Sepe and Salvatore Claps (19), Tommaso La Mantia and Salvatore Pasta (20), Iva I. Apostolova (21), Tiiu Koff (22), Giampiero Lombardi (23), Anna Berg and Ulf Segerström (24), Berien Elbersen (25), Antun Alegro and Renata Sostaric (26), Fernando J. Pulido (27), Veronica Sarateanu (28), Rosa M. Canals (29), Rainer Luick (30), Jan Jansen (31), Ivica Ljubicic (32), Federico Fillat (33), Terry McCormick, Stephen Lard and Lois Mansfield (34), Marina Meca Ferreira de Castro (35), Bruce Forbes and Ari Laakso (36), Edgar Reisinger (37), Martin Stock (38), Martin Vadella (39), Marijn Nijssen (40), Jacques Lasseur (41), Davy McCracken (42), Pier Paolo Roggero and Simonetta Bagella (43), Marie-José Gaillard (44, 45). Particular thanks are due to Norbert Röder, Davy McCracken, and Lucia Sepe for their amendments and comments to a first draft of this paper. ; Peer reviewed