European Union Regional Policy Research Articles

The Differentiated Impact of Perceived EU Regional Policy on Citizens’ Positions on European Integration

AbstractThe main goal of the regional development programme of the European Union (EU) is to decrease disparities in the economic situation between the regional units of the EU member states. An important side note effect of EU regional policy is that citizens should be able to directly identify the positive aspects of European integration when realising the impact of the EU for structural programmes in their city or region. We aim to evaluate this mechanism and ask whether the individually perceived benefit of EU regional funds in the home area of a respondent has a positive impact on their position towards European integration. Furthermore, we discuss how a relational perspective on EU regional funds—that is, whether a respondent considers other regions or other EU member states to benefit more from the EU regional funds than their own region—mediates the expected positive impact of EU regional funds on an individual’s position on European integration. We answer these questions by analysing new survey data conducted in two German states, Baden-Wuerttemberg and Thuringia, which differ significantly in terms of the regional funding they receive. The analysis shows not only that there is a significant difference in the positions of respondents on European integration between the two regions but also that perceiving personal benefits of EU regional funding increases the support for European integration. Furthermore, individuals’ thinking that their own region benefits more from EU regional funding than other regions tends to increase their support for European integration.

Is the European Social Progress Index robust? Implications for the design of European Union regional Cohesion Policy

ABSTRACT The European Social Progress Index (EU-SPI) is a composite index launched by the European Commission in 2016 to assess social progress. It is constructed using non-economic indicators, and is intended to serve as a tool for European regional policies. This paper shows that the 2020 release of the index is robust to multiple alternative designs, and thus suitable for policymaking. The EU-SPI and gross domestic product per capita (GDPpc) are positively correlated, although they are in no way substitutes. These findings suggest that the EU-SPI could complement the GDPpc as an instrument to determine eligibility and achieve a more citizen-oriented allocation of European Cohesion Policy funds.

I will survive! The impact of place-based policies when public transfers fade out

ABSTRACT Are place-based policies capable of taking lagging areas to a higher growth trajectory permanently? We answer this crucial question by investigating what happens when strongly subsidized regions experience a substantial reduction in funding. By analysing an extensive database via the mean balancing approach, we estimate the causal impact of exiting the convergence region status of the European Union regional policy. We find that only regions that experienced a considerable reduction in funding during a recession suffered a negative impact on economic growth. However, the impact varies with the features of the regions and the local economic context.

The Place of Cultural Economy in Development Policies of Developing Countries: Van Province

Van city has serious socio-economic cultural development problems. Despite these problems, Van's cultural and natural diversity, as well as its potential to be an important commercial center due to its geopolitical situation, are important for the solution of extant problems. In this regard, this paper strives to examine the challenges of Van from the cultural aspect. Accordingly; in Van, the investments determined by the actors affecting the development and planning process periodically (2003-2016) were evaluated vis-à-vis the classification of cultural economy and human development index. Content analysis was used in the research. The European Union (EU) is one of the international actors in Van and the national actors are; Ministry of Development, Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Culture and Tourism, T.C. Prime Ministry General Directorate of Foundations, Eastern Anatolia Project (EAP) Regional Development Administration, Eastern Anatolia Development Agency (EADA) and Municipalities. It is seen that these are important actors in development policies and the investments they have made coincide with the strategies they have targeted. International actors prioritize social and human development investments within the framework of EU regional development policies. National actors however followed both a development model within the scope of industry, trade and services, which was predominantly based on the economic perspective, and a development model from the tourism perspective in the services class. Consequently, it is seen that development in Van is not directly evaluated from the cultural view, but evaluated together with tourism, culture is instrumentalized for tourism and cultural tourism is brought to the fore and cultural policies are developed from the tourism perspective.

How different multilevel and multi-actor arrangements impact policy implementation: evidence from EU regional policy

ABSTRACT While implementation through multilevel governance (MLG) has often been found to have achieved limited success, the literature agrees that further studies are required to investigate if and how different MLG systems impact policy implementation. By collecting data from the implementation of four European Union (EU) regional development programmes, characterized by distinct organizational and institutional arrangements, this article adopts a performance-oriented approach to EU implementation in order to support or challenge the conventional assumptions about the expected benefits of MLG. The data suggest that effective MLG needs a central coordinating authority that has the power to enforce decentralized actors’ compliance, mobilize the implementation bodies, and provide actors with adequate organizational structures and the resources that they lack.

Assessment of the Living Conditions in Polish and German Transborder Regions in the Context of Strengthening Territorial Cohesion in the European Union: Competitiveness or Complementation?

The European Union's regional policy aims to strengthen economic, social, and territorial cohesion and equal space development opportunities. It is an action linking UE that emphasises the problem of cohesion in the interregional context. The essence of territorial cohesion is the necessity to eliminate inequalities between the living conditions of the population. The concept of quality of life is ambiguous, multidimensional and interdisciplinary. This problem is of particular importance concerning border areas, i.e. the periphery of countries, which often adversely affects the population's standard of living. The article aimed to assess the living conditions and the direction of changes in those terms on the Polish-German border, an internal border of the EU (former Eastern Bloc countries). The analysis covered the years 2004–2019. The impact of the EU's regional development and cohesion policies for border areas (INTERREG) in improving the analysed regions' living conditions was also determined. The method of aggregation, standardised sums, was used in the analysis. The research showed that the level of living conditions of these border regions' population was spatially diversified, being more favourable on the German side. The analysed border regions had less favourable material and non-material living conditions than the countries' average value. Significant changes in the living conditions of border regions in the years 2004–2019 were established towards equalising the quality of life, which was influenced by the spatial policy of territorial cohesion.

The Dynamics of the European Union Regional Policy

The subject of this paper is to present the shape, the legal basis and the prospects for the development of the European Union regional policy. This policy assumes great importance in the face of weakening of state’s structures due to the European Union bodies and decentralization of management of local affairs. The EU regional policy is a very problematic area and requires extensive studies. Thus, I confined myself to analyze the development of basis of the EU regional policy primarily through the prism of treaty law. The analysis showed a rate of development which process still continues. Despite a good legal basis, the EU regional policy still requires constant adjustment, especially when it comes to rationalizing subsidies. The passive regional policy leads to promote only the economically under developed areas. Therefore, it is necessary for the implementation of programs to support the innovation, especially in highly developed regions, which are the engine of the whole European Union economy.

Spanish public image of the EU regional policy

The article is devoted to the analysis of the perception of European integration and the regional policy of the European Union (EU) among the citizens of modern Spain. Particular attention is paid to the comparison of periods before the COVID-19 pandemic (2019) and after it (October 2021). The purpose of this paper is to identify the opinion of Spanish society on the EU regional policy. The first part of the article presents the analytical framework of the study. The second part describes its methodology. The third part analyzes the opinion polls in Spain, conducted by Eurobarometer. According to the Eurobarometer database, on the one hand, the author notes despite the pandemic, citizens positively assess the impact of the European Union bodies on their everyday life. On the other hand, the pandemic has shown that the states are key actors in the EU decision-making process. The initiative to shape the development of the EU's regional policy still belongs to the Member States, but not to the regions and/or supranational bodies. The scientific significance of the article is that the results of Eurobarometer public opinion polls are generalized. This is the first time when this approach has been used in the study of this topic.

How much does state aid mitigate employment losses? Local policy effects at a time of economic crisis

ABSTRACT We evaluate the effectiveness of the most extensive experiment of income redistribution, that is, the European Union regional policy, at a time of economic crisis. By exploiting geographical discontinuities in fund eligibility, we analyse comprehensive data on all publicly funded Italian projects at the municipality level. We find a positive impact of localized support to firms with a sizable increase in employment and the number of plants in intensively treated areas. The result is an important policy lesson concerning the effects of place-based policies at a time of a long-lasting recession, such as that engendered by the Covid-19 crisis.

Análisis del Diseño de la Estrategia RIS3 de Andalucía a través del Benchmarking Regional

Research and innovation strategies for smart specialisation (RIS3), conceived as a tool to improve the economic performance of regions through innovation, has played a key role in the European Union regional policy in the 2014-2020 programing period.
 One of the main points of RIS3 strategies is the selection of few specialisation priorities in which regional economies have a certain competitive advantage. Regional benchmarking exercises are encouraged by the European Commission, to provide a better vision of the position of the region and detect its strengths and weaknesses.
 In our work we focus our attention in Andalusia, a region in which European regional policy has a very relevant historical importance. We intend to reinforce the SWOT analysis included in the RIS3 strategy of Andalusia 2014-2020, performing a detailed comparative analysis of the region in relation to a selection of reference regions, using the benchmarking methodology proposed by the European Commission. This exercise allows us to enrich the SWOT analysis included in the Andalusian RIS3 strategy 2014-2020 and, therefore, to design new proposals for action that could have been included and to propose a cualitative methodology that could be useful in the design of RIS3 strategies in the period 2021-2027.

Why territory matters for implementing active subsidiarity in EU regional policy

ABSTRACT The concept of active subsidiarity advocated by the European Commission has important implications for European Union (EU) regional policy. This article examines the main tenets of active subsidiarity and how they relate to competing notions of territory and key regional policymaking instruments for the 2021–27 programme period. It finds that territory matters in EU regional policy, as clearly defined nested regional boundaries provide an important framework for engaging sub-national-level actors and bringing EU policymaking closer to citizens. However, a stronger recognition of territory is required if policymakers are to effectively implement active subsidiarity and place-based territorial governance policymaking models.

The evolving role of EU Regional Policy: Implications for Australia?

In 2013, ANZJES published an article on the significance of European Union (EU) Regional Policy in the process of European integration and its implications for Asia. Over the past decade, EU Regional Policy has evolved considerably. It is still centred on facilitating European integration, but also assumes a much more central role in focusing attention on harnessing resources, intellectual and economic, in order to address major societal missions. Regional Policy, or Cohesion, funds constitute approximately one third of the total European Commission budget and are, therefore, not only an important resource for integration, but also for addressing the wider priorities around the European Green Deal, and indeed, the planet. This is evident in the proposed Multiannual Financial Framework agreed by the European Council for 2021-27, in which Cohesion funding is seen to be a crucial resource for economic and social recovery from the COVID-19 crisis. This article reviews the evolution of this thinking in the last decade and considers its growing international significance. Whilst not necessarily imagined in 2010, when the EU established its European External Action Service (EEAS), a focus on regions and their innovation systems has enabled the EU to strengthen its global influence significantly.

Governing ‘places that don’t matter’: agonistic spatial planning practices in Finnish peripheral regions

ABSTRACT Economic geographer Andrés Rodríguez-Pose argued recently that declining peripheries are increasingly becoming ‘places that don’t matter’ in the formation or implementation of national or European Union (EU) regional policies. In turn, this might result in a triumph of populist anti-establishment movements in peripheries, posing a threat to well-being in both the prospering and the declining regions. We argue that ‘places that don’t matter’ also exist in Finland, a country that has a long tradition of regional policy and equalizing welfare schemes. Our focus is on administration rather than politics, however. We look at the Finnish peripheral regions of Kainuu and Lapland, discussing the practices of spatial planners, who influence and implement EU and national regional policies in these regions. We ask how strategic spatial planning in Kainuu and Lapland is affected by the revengeful and antagonistic attitudes towards the ‘elites’ who, allegedly, are not directing a sufficient amount of attention to the peripheries. We look at the planning practices and institutional settings within which they work from the perspective of agonistic planning theory, asking whether and how spatial planners can turn the antagonistic and potentially revengeful attitudes into productive forces that could positively affect spatial development in these regions.

Exploring the functional area approach in EU urban strategies

A vast literature has investigated processes of spatial reconfiguration, contributing to the emergence of a ‘new urban question’ that not only reframes traditional urban issues but also challenges our understanding of what cities are today. Be that as it may, the ‘European city model’ still remains current, particularly with regards to the institutional role of cities as they are increasingly considered to be relevant policy actors. This urban paradox gives new emphasis to the urban regional scale and urgently calls for the two dimensions to be connected both in terms of territorial dynamics and policy formulation. This paper addresses the topic by focusing on the functional area approach promoted by the European Union regional policy discourse, and by discussing how it shapes and legitimates new spatial configurations, with implications for urban analysis and policy approaches. The paper is based on the analysis of a database which gathers nearly 1000 strategies for Sustainable Urban Development funded by the EU between 2014-2020, and features a significant number of functional areas. The analysis reveals that the functional area approach does not only apply to metropolitan areas, big cities, or Functional Urban Areas, but can also be used for different types of territories, beyond metropolitan areas. It also underscores the need for more extensive research on what spatialities and territorial arrangements emerge from this process.

The effects of tourism on EU regional cohesion: a comparative spatial cross-regressive assessment of economic growth and convergence by level of development

This research explores the implications of tourism for the regional cohesion of the European Union (EU). The performance of domestic and inbound tourism is tested statistically, taking into account the regions’ level of development and both direct and spill-over effects. The study therefore addresses a subdimension of tourism economic sustainability by focussing on the distribution of its effects. Within a tourism augmented conditional convergence framework, spatial cross-regressive models are estimated using the System Generalised Method of Moments. The unbalanced panel data set mainly comes from Eurostat’s regional statistics database and covers 258 regions for the period 2000–2016. Our findings indicate that domestic tourism is a better instrument for enhancing the territorial cohesion of the EU, especially for less developed and transition regions. Inbound tourism clearly hinders the convergence of these regions and has negative direct and spill-over effects on them. Inbound tourism also acts as a drag on the economic growth of more developed neighbouring regions. Policy implications include actions to support SME competitiveness, technological development and innovation, sustainable transport and network infrastructures, training and social inclusion. These areas are thematic objectives of the EU regional policy. Particular attention should be paid to coordinating the measures implemented under them.

The Response of Regional Well-Being to EU Cohesion Policy Interventions

The world’s largest place-based economic development policy operating within a single legal and institutional architecture is the regional and urban policy of the European Union (EU). In this paper we analyse how this policy is related to the promotion of regional well-being. In order to do this, we take advantage of the fact that the different elements of the policy have different funding streams focussed on different dimensions of social and economic development, and this allows us employ a novel empirical approach exploiting a newly-available uniquely detailed dataset. On the basis of both parametric and semi-parametric frameworks our analysis demonstrates that the different elements of EU regional development policy do influence regional well-being in a manner which is consistent with the objectives of the policy. For the most part, higher interventions generate higher well-being growth. However, the ways in which they do this appear to be very different. The relationship between policy aimed at social and well-being improvements is concave, whereas for policy aimed at enhancing economic growth the relationship is convex, while for both funding streams combined the relationship is broadly linear. This implies that for at the highest levels of funding intensity, there are potentially some efficiency gains associated with switches from one funding stream to another in order to improve the effectiveness of the policy as a whole. Given the fact that regional policy accounts for one third of the EU budget, these potential efficiency gains are likely to be significant.

Why the financial aid of the EU's regional policy does not impact on the public investment level? The case of the Spanish regions

Given that an expansive impact of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) aid on public investment is expected, two models have been estimated to determine, respectively, the size of this impact and the relationship between the own financing of regional public investment and the external financing received from ERDF in Spanish regions. Evidence has been obtained that the impact of transfers from the ERDF on public investment is almost nil. In addition, for each euro that the Spanish regions received from the ERDF, own funds for public investment allocated by regional governments have been reduced 23 cents, showing an important relation of substitution between the two sources of financing. Both models include data between 1994 and 2014 and their estimation has used traditional methods and methods based on the cointegration of variables with a panel structure, such as FMOLS and DOLS. The main results obtained with the two methodologies they are quite close, confirming the initial hypothesis: in the presence of weak donor restrictions, the political process in governments receiving ERDF transfers determine revealed preferences about public investment, neutralizing conditions established by the donor. This study also unequivocally demonstrates the presence of simultaneous causality between investment aid received from the ERDF and regional public investment and between said aid and the own resources that regional governments dedicate to financing public investment. These findings confirm the existence of a bias that seriously affects the effectiveness of the European Union's regional policy.

A Multicriteria Approach for Assessing the Impact of ICT on EU Sustainable Regional Policy

As a global actor, the European Union (EU) plays a leading role in international efforts to promote sustainable development globally. All sustainable objectives and targets need Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) as key catalysts, since ICTs constitute tools of unprecedented power which help people to face the growing challenges of rising population, poverty, epidemics and climate change. Policy makers in the EU are increasingly putting ICTs into relations with sustainable regional development. This paper aims to study and assess the impact of ICT on the EU regional policy in terms of sustainable development by applying the multicriteria approach, PROMETHEE II, using the software Visual PROMETHEE. The criteria that were used in this research are the criteria that both the European Commission and member states define to assess the ICT implications of new EU legislation since 2010. The results revealed that the impact of ICT on EU sustainable regional policy has gotten stronger in the last two decades.

Odrodzona brytyjskość postdewolucyjnej Walii. Reintegracja wewnętrzna Wielkiej Brytanii w warunkach Brexitu

Article describes Welsh authorities attempt to enhance their political position (achieved as a result of the devolution reform) as some sort of compensation for the Brexit negative impact on economic and social development of the region. The conception created by Carwyn Jones’ Government could not been presented as an alternative to focusing autonomous processes on gaining independence, because of Welsh people lack of interest of the latter solution. As an effect it has been completely ignored by the national authorities. Inability to implement the Scottish model of political emancipation (in the context of step-by-step exception of the European Union regional policy mechanisms in the United Kingdom) has become a factor stimulating real re-Britisation of Wales process

Sociolinguistic Consequences of Economic Convergence in Galicia, Spain

Changes in the nature of capitalist production over the past thirty years have allowed regions to assert a greater political and economic presence in the new global marketplace. Galicia, a Spanish region located in the northwestern corner of the Iberian Peninsula, was once Spain’s lowest economic performer. Galicia’s late move from a rural agrarian to an industrialized and technology-based economy has been accompanied by urban growth and drastic changes in land use over the past three decades. These changes have brought cultural consequences to the region, including prominent language shift from the regional language of Galician to the prestigious majority language of Castilian. To help analyze these themes, this article looks at the aims and application of both the European Union (EU) regional development and cultural policies and uses remote sensing tools to track the land-use change of urban centers and agricultural land over a thirty-year period in Galicia, along with historical and current analysis of Galicia’s economy and sociolinguistic geographies. Results show that a policy mismatch exists between EU regional economic and cultural policies, wherein the former inadvertently damages the latter.