Abstract
This chapter offers an overview of the evolution of Spain’s regional policy since joining the European Union (EU). A simplified reference is also made to the virtual disappearance of regional operations carried out during the period of impact of the economic crisis (1975–1985). The chapter analyses the general orientation of the regional policies applied and their operational performance, both from a national and a European perspective. The impact of Spain’s entry into the current EU had a very important impact on Spanish regional policy and implied a radical change of direction in performance. The Spanish legal and operational framework had to be adapted and the country had to learn the new “rules of the game” in order to acquire important financial resources allocated to regional operations. To be precise, it can be said that with the beginning of the programming stage between 1989 and 1993, Spanish regional policies – under European regional policy orientation and together with a timid but clear consolidation of the decentralisation process started in 1978 – started a brilliant period. This period ended in 2006, the closing year of a golden phase when European financial resources were obtained. These resources undoubtedly helped Spanish regions to improve their position in the European regional ranking in a wide variety of variables (economic, physical infrastructures, social, etc.).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
During the first term of office of UCD, the so-called Pactos de la Moncloa (Moncloa Agreements), signed by the Government and all political parties with parliamentary representation, trade unions and employers associations, focussed on real problems of Spanish economy to reduce the inflation spiral. Although it could not stop the high increase in unemployment, it resulted in improving the serious external imbalance.
- 2.
This change of trend was unforeseen by the Decree Law of 30 of April, 1985. Its preamble expressed a clear message from the Ministry of Economy and Finance, still under the direction of Mr. Boyer that hard times were coming to an end. There were clear signs of a change of trend and a new positive turn in the economic situation. In other words, the crisis adjustment was over.
- 3.
The key element of this strategy of competitive disinflation is that the exchange rate of the peseta, clearly overvalued, required the moderation in growth of internal prices. However, this was not achieved, and the situation grew worse. This was due to high exchange rates that attracted important foreign capital flows, making monetary control more complex and becoming an additional factor encouraging price increase.
- 4.
The Spanish Plan to Dynamise Economy and Enhance Productivity arose from the Spanish economy’s need to find a durable and balanced growth pattern, based on the increase of productivity and employment. Moreover, this plan falls in line with the relaunching of the Lisbon Strategy (renewed since mid 2005) to increase competitiveness and welfare in the Spanish economy, which are the real final objectives of the Plan itself.
- 5.
This new political-administrative framework was not exempt from problems, such as the existence of three interlocutors: Central government, regional authorities and local councils. Each of these needed to agree upon approve the framework within which the commitments of each party involved were established, as well as the economic and financial nature of such commitments. Nevertheless, this book will not analyse the regional policy designed and implemented by regional and local authorities, which does in no way mean that these are insignificant. On the contrary, they acquired an outstanding prominence from the 1990s onwards.
- 6.
Three basic aspects, among others, could be highlighted for this new period of European regional policy. Firstly, the high financial increase in Structural Funds; secondly, their concentration on various objectives, which clearly benefited Spain due to the relatively worse situation of its interregional disparities, and finally, the strict European requirements related to the application of funds and reflected on the principles of additionality, coordination and co-participation.
- 7.
For a more detailed analysis of the strategy for each of the periods, see Mancha and Cuadrado (2000).
- 8.
In fact, the basic priorities focussed on connecting adequately the worst-funded regions with the transeuropean transport axis in order to reach minimum accessibility thresholds, and to improve the competitiveness of regional productive sectors by means of providing more support to small- and medium-sized enterprises.
- 9.
However, a transitory support was established until the year 2005 for those regions eligible as objective 1 in 1999, but not meeting this condition for the year 2000, and until 2006 for those regions now eligible within the new objective 2. For the rest of regions, the aid would continue only by means of the EAGGF Guidance, ESF and FIFG during a period of time not exceeding the year 2006. Within this objective, outlying regions were also included, as well as the regions formerly assigned to objective 6.
- 10.
- 11.
Formerly objective 1, it covers regions that have a GDP per capita of less than 75% of the EU average, as well as phasing-out regions (those regions which would have been eligible for funding in terms of the EU-15, but with a GDP per capita higher than the threshold of 75% in terms of the UE-27).
- 12.
It includes those EU regions not included in the convergence objective.
- 13.
So-called the regions eligible for funding in terms of the EU-15, but whose per capita GDP is higher than 75% of the EU-27 average. Include those regions affected by the “statistical effect”.
- 14.
So-called the regions that would exceed the threshold of 75% of the former EU-15 average, but were objective 1 regions during the programming period 2000–2006. The financial support is limited to the current programming period.
- 15.
% inversely proportional to GDP per capita; 20% directly proportional to migratory balance; 5% directly proportional to the area; and 5% directly proportional to regional unemployment rate. A correcting factor of ‘insularity’ was also added, which meant another 5% for the Balearics and Canary Islands, plus 1% for each 50 km of distance between their territory and the Iberian Peninsula, proportionally subtracting the resulting amount from the rest of regions.
- 16.
.5% directly proportional to relative population. 1.6% directly proportional to migratory balance. 1% directly proportional to unemployment rate, 3% directly proportional to the area of each region. 6.9% directly proportional to dispersion of population within the territory. Once the ICF is distributed according to the previous criteria and weightings, the result obtained is corrected according to the following criterion: The inverse of the GDP per capita of each region and the ‘insularity’, which will increase by 63.1% the amount corresponding to the Autonomous Region of Canary Islands based on the aforementioned criteria. The increase obtained will be subtracted from the rest of the autonomous regions proportionally to the quantities that would have corresponded to them for the same aforementioned paragraphs.
- 17.
The Complementary Fund has an annual allocation equivalent to 33.33% of its respective ICF. This will be allocated to finance the investment expenditures, and also the expenditures required to launch and implement those investments debited against the ICF or the Complementary Fund during a maximum period of 2 years.
- 18.
This legal regulation was modified in 1995 only with regard to the establishment of zones and subsidy ceilings. This implied an increase in the percentage of the population that benefit, which rose from 63 to 75%.
- 19.
EZP comprise the less-developed geographical areas, defined according to the following criteria: GDP per capita, unemployment rate and other indicators representative of the intensity of national problems. IDZ comprise those areas affected by industrial restructuring processes that would have had a negative impact on the activity and employment level. Finally, SZ were considered to include special situations in areas that, due to the characteristics of their population, geographical situation, GDP, etc., would need a specific treatment and were not considered to be EZP or IDZ.
- 20.
The possibility of providing public aids through the REIS is an exception to article 92 of the Rome Treaty, which expressly declares incompatible with the state aids which distort or threaten to distort competition.
- 21.
The rest of the objectives are summarised in objective 2 (regions with socio-economic restructuring problems) and objective 3 (dedicated to human resources). However, there were four Community Initiatives: Interreg (crossborder cooperation); Urban (actions in cities); Leader (rural development) and Equal (equal opportunities).
- 22.
One of the first works was carried out by the European Parliament (1991), which designed a methodology later used for the Spanish case in other researches, such as those by Cordero et al. (1995), Lázaro and Cordero (1995), Correa et al. (1995) and Correa and Manzanedo (2002) and Mancha and Cuadrado (1996). These research studies concluded that such funds positively influence Spanish regions.
- 23.
Absolute values obtained from the concentration index calculated for the period 1986–2006 are: ERDF, 0.35; ESF, 0.15; EAGGF Guidance section, 0.24; FCI, 0.18 and SIER, 0.41.
References
Cordero, G., Gayoso, A., Pavón, A., & Rodriguez, E. (1995). La política de cohesión económica y social de la UE y el presupuesto comunitario. Working Paper. Madrid: General Direction of Planning. Ministry of economy and Finance.
Correa, M. D., & Manzanedo, J. (2002). Política regional española y europea. Working Paper. Dirección General de Análisis y Programación Presupuestaria. Madrid: Ministry of Economy and Finance.
Correa, M. D., Fanlo, A., Manzanedo J., & Santillán, S. (1995). Fondos comunitarios en España: regionalización y análisis de su incidencia. Working Paper. General Direction of Planning. Madrid: Ministry of Economy and Finance.
Cuadrado, J. R. and Mancha, T. (1995). Política regional comunitaria: ventajas e implicaciones para España. Economistas, 13, pp. 66–67.
Cuadrado, J. R., & Mancha, T. (2008). Política regional y de cohesión. In J. M. Jordán Galduf (Ed.), Economía de la Unión Europea. Madrid: Thompsom.
European Parliament (1991). Regional Effects of Community Policies. Luxembourg.
European Commission (2007). Cohesion Policy 2007–2013. Comments and oficial texts. Brussels. European Commission.
Garrido, R., Mancha, T., & Cuadrado, J. R. (2007). La política regional europea. 20 años de avance y un futuro nuevo. Investigaciones Regionales 10.
Lázaro, L., & Cordero, G. (1995). La política de cohesión económica y social de la UE: evaluación desde la perspectiva española. Papeles de Economía Española 63.
Mancha Navarro, T. (1999). Desequilibrios regionales e integración económica: algunas consideraciones para el caso español, Economía Aragonesa, February
Mancha Navaarro, T. (2008). ”El ciclo político-económico en la democracia”. In L. Gámir (Ed.), Política Económica de España. Madrid: Alianza Editorial.
Mancha, T., & Cuadrado, J. R. (1996). La convergencia de las regiones españolas: una díficil tarea. In J.R. Cuadrado and T. Mancha (Ed.), España frente a la Unión Económica y Monetaria. Madrid: Civitas.
Mancha, T., & Cuadrado, J. R. (2000). Política regional. In Gámir (Ed.), Política Económica de España. Madrid: Alianza.
Mancha, T., Cuadrado, J. R., & Garrido, R. (1999). Evaluación de resultados y reserva de eficacia: un desafío para la política regional en la Unión Europea. Communication presented to the III Jornadas de Política Económica. Alicante, April.
Mancha Navarro, T., & Garrido Yserte, R. (2004). La Política regional de la Unión Europea: quo vadis? Cuadernos de Economía, 27(73), 13–35.
Mancha Navarro, T., & Garrido Yserte, R. (2008). Regional policy in the European Union: The cohesion-competitiveness dilemma. Regional Policy and Practice, 1(1).
Mancha Navarro, T., Garrido Yserte, R., & Pablo Pindado, F. (2005). Evaluación de la calidad de la gestión y ejecución de la política regional: la Reserva de Eficacia y los progresos en la consecución de los objetivos planteados. Communication presented to the IV Conferencia Sociedad Española de Evaluación. Madrid, June.
Mancha Navarro, T., Garrido Yserte, R., Pablo Pindado, F., & Fernández, N. (2008). La política regional europea y el dilema entre competitividad y cohesión. In J. M. Jordán, and A. Sánhez (Eds.), Desafíos actuales de la política económica. Madrid: Civitas-Thompson.
Ministry of Economic and Finance (several years). La planificación regional y sus instrumentos. Informe Anual. Madrid: Ministerio de Economía y Hacienda.
Ministry of Economic and Finance. (2007). Marco de Referencia Estratégico Nacional 2007–2013. Madrid: Ministerio de Economía y Hacienda.
Parlamento Europeo. (1991). Efectos regionales de las políticas comunitarias. Serie Política regional y transportes. Luxemburg: Parlamento Europeo.
Sosvilla, S. (2007). La economía española y la política de cohesión europea. Communication presented to the VIII Jornadas de Política Económica, Valencia, October.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Mancha-Navarro, T., Garrido-Yserte, R. (2009). The Evolution of Spanish Regional Policy, 1977–2008. In: Cuadrado-Roura, J. (eds) Regional Policy, Economic Growth and Convergence. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02178-7_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02178-7_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-02177-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-02178-7
eBook Packages: Business and EconomicsEconomics and Finance (R0)