European Regional Policy: What Can Be Learned

Abstract

The need for a common regional policy was not considered in the Treaty of Rome, which brought about the European Economic Community (1957). Two main forces supported the important change in the 1980s and launched the EU Regional Policy (ERP): first, the integration of some countries with GDP pc significantly below the EU average and within-country disparities, such as Ireland, Greece, Portugal, and Spain, and, second, the possible impact on regional disparities of the advances toward a more integrated Union. The arguments supporting the decision to implement regional policy on a European scale are reviewed in Sect. 2. The principles and main aspects of the first two pluriannual programs, as well as a balance of their results, are analyzed in Sect. 3. From the very beginning, two key aspects were underlined: the decision to primarily benefit lagging regions and the belief that regional policies should be designed with a long-term focus. Nevertheless, from 2000 onwards, some additional goals have been introduced which are not clearly compatible. The main one has sought to combine the objectives of increasing economic and social cohesion while also addressing the weaknesses of the European economy, in terms of productivity, innovation, and technological change. This has constituted the basis of the last three programs (Sect. 4), and its main consequence has been that the objective of equality has been relegated to a second plane in favor of objectives related to growth efficiency. Section 5, also important, offers an evaluation of the achievements, weaknesses, and perspectives of the ERP. This allows us to extract a number of significant lessons from the European experience. Some final conclusions close the chapter.