Abstract
ABSTRACT Some regions in Europe that have been heavily supported by the European Union’s Cohesion Policy have recently opted for parties with a strong Eurosceptic orientation. The results at the ballot box have been put forward as evidence that Cohesion Policy is ineffective for tackling the rising, European-wide wave of discontent. However, the evidence to support this view is scarce and often contradictory. This paper analyses the link between Cohesion Policy and the vote for Eurosceptic parties. It uses the share of votes cast for Eurosceptic parties in more than 63,000 electoral districts in national legislative elections in the EU-28 to assess whether Cohesion Policy investment since the year 2000 has made a difference for the electoral support for parties opposed to European integration. The results indicate that Cohesion Policy investment is linked to a lower anti-EU vote. This result is robust to employing different econometric approaches, to considering the variety of European development funds, to different periods of investment, to different policy domains, to shifts in the unit of analysis and to different levels of opposition by parties to the European project.
Highlights
Between 2014 and 2020 the European Union (EU) spent almost one third of its budget – or €351.8 billion – “in order to support job creation, business competitiveness, economic growth, sustainable development, and improve citizens’ quality of life” in its regions and cities (European Union, 2014)
We resort to Instrumental Variable (IV) analysis as the most common way to reduce the potential bias of endogeneity in the data, as votes for Eurosceptic parties may be influenced by the independent variables, but support for parties opposed to European integration may have an impact on, say, the economic performance of a region and, its wealth
Before conducting the econometric analysis, we look at the relationship between the main variable of interest and the independent variable
Summary
Between 2014 and 2020 the European Union (EU) spent almost one third of its budget – or €351.8 billion – “in order to support job creation, business competitiveness, economic growth, sustainable development, and improve citizens’ quality of life” in its regions and cities (European Union, 2014). By the late 2010s – and one long economic crisis later – the share of European citizens expressing doubts on the European project had reached 45% of the population
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