The European Enterprise of General Interest: A Tool for Balanced Development

The enlargement of the European Union to new member countries of Central/Eastern Europe raises the necessity of a vast realignment operation. Some of the richest and most developed areas of the world, which boast leading industries, coexist in the Union today alongside pre-industrial areas with very low income. The balanced development in twenty-first century Europe cannot only be guaranteed by transfers of a solidarity nature, but requires interventions on the development mechanisms in order that the realignment is an endogenous structural component of the development itself. In this framework, this paper analyses the role that the creation of European enterprises of general interest can carry out for modernisation and territorial realignment in the European Union.