Policy Review Section

Abstract

In this Policy Review Section, the articles have been prepared by practitioners and policy-makers both at EC level and within government departments of selected EC Member States. This has allowed interesting differences in perspective both between European and national administrations, and between established and relatively new Member States. To establish the broad Community context, the first two articles were written by staff of the European Commission Directorates–General XVI and IV, responsible for regional policy and competition policy respectively. In considering the effects of the 1988 reform of the Structural Funds, Hall and Van der Wee (DG XVI) highlight the increase in EC regional aid to productive investment, but observe that EC assistance is still relatively small in macro-economic terms. The article examines the challenges facing Community regional policy in the 1990s through economic and monetary union and the liberalization of the central and east European economies, and it concludes by exploring three main initiatives which may strengthen EC structural and regional policies. The second article, by Marques (DG IV), sets out to show that the contribution to economic and social cohesion achieved by EC competition policy is at least as significant as that made by the Structural Funds, albeit through different instruments. It describes the measures by which regional aid is assessed, focusing particularly on geographical location and differentiation in intensity of aid, and considers the on-going monitoring of horizontal and sectoral aids with a view to increasing the effectiveness of regional aid. The policy articles from Member States–drawn from France, the Netherlands and Spain–provide interesting contrasts. Chicoye, from European Affairs in DATAR, examines French territorial policies in relation to the Single European Market. Following a description of the current regional imbalances in France, the article considers policy objectives and classical and new policy instruments. In the last few years, the influence of the Community on French policies of amenagement du territoire has been growing steadily. Chicoye describes why French policy-makers have opposed a Community regional policy and cites examples of how the Commission's approach fails to take into account the specificities of French territory. Kleyn and Oosterwijk present a Single Market perspective from the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs. Their article describes how, in the last decade, regional policy in the Netherlands has shifted in emphasis from achieving geographically-balanced patterns of economic activity to maximizing the contribution of the regions to national economic growth. An internationally-competitive business environment is now seen as more relevant for the economic context of the emerging Single Market, now pursued through policy instruments which are not regionally-restricted. In comparison, the final paper by Gonzalez-Liebmann and Montalvo, from the Ministry of Economics and Finance in Madrid, acknowledges the value of economic cohesion and welcomes the prospect of a European regional policy. Although expressing specific criticisms, they assess positively EC regional policy over the period 1989–93, and offer recommendations for future guidelines for regional policy in the context of the Single European Market. They advocate stronger regional policy instruments to aid convergence and to allow countries such as Spain to participate fully in the SEM.