Cohesion policy post-2027

The debate about Cohesion Policy post 2027 has already started. Meanwhile, many of the adjustments of the delivery mechanism introduced in recent years still have to show whether they help to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of Cohesion Policy.
To facilitate the discussion about which changes to delivery mechanisms are worth carrying over to post 2027, this report offers a first review of changes in the 2021-2027 regulations, flexibilities introduced in Cohesion Policy regulations to face the pandemic and refugee crises, and possible lessons from the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF).

Cohesion in Europe needs to be understood in a broader perspective and encourage policy making beyond gross domestic product (GDP). In light of today´s challenges and policy objectives, well-being or quality of life, sustainable development goals (SDGs) and resilience should be included in the debate about cohesion and thus about EU cohesion policy. Cohesion policy post 2027 could benefit from a closer link to well-being and SDG indicators. A review of existing indicators shows there are already various composite indicators as well as indicators which could be used, with examples of well-being and SDG indices to learn from. This report provides some reflections.

The study was conducted from June 2023 to January 2024. It feeds into the work on the European Committee of the Regions Opinion on the future of Cohesion Policy, the annual debate on the State of the Regions and Cities in the EU and the
debate on further completion of the Single Market, building on its 30th anniversary. It should also contribute to the work of the Cohesion Alliance. Furthermore, this work could be useful for the European Committee of the Regions Opinion in view of the debate on the next Strategic Agenda 2024-2029 and political guidelines of the next European Commission 2024-2029.

This paper explores avenues for cross-fertilisation between the mission-oriented approach and Cohesion Policy. It argues in favour of mutual policy learning between the two to address some of their respective shortcomings: Cohesion Policy is facing a gradual erosion of its identity, whereas the mission-oriented approach needs a stronger territorial perspective.

This Discussion Paper focuses on the upcoming review of the post-2027 Multi Annual Financial Framework and the debate concerning the future EU Cohesion Policy . It argues that Cohesion Policy’s purpose requires reinvention, not an incremental upgrade. Four overarching themes are analysed, reframing Cohesion Policy with a strategic, long-term investment perspective: EU resilience, security, strategic autonomy, and reforms. The author then proposes five recommendations which weave together these themes with the policy’s long-standing core features.

This paper reviews the nature of, and case for, modern case for place-based policies. In order to do this, we examine how the thinking about place-based policies has developed over time in the context of the changes experienced in the economies of advanced economies over recent decades.

This paper has two main goals. First, we study the heterogeneous consequences of EU cohesion policy on regional economic growth in Europe over the past three decades, by applying a heterogeneous coefficient approach to new panel‐time series data. We calculate the region‐specific effects of the policy in terms of long‐run gross domestic product growth. Second, we study regional differences in terms of policy effects depending on the level of assistance received by the regions. We make a distinction among cases of effective, ineffective, trigger and marginal policy. We also document that the effectiveness of EU cohesion policy in the long run can be explained by some of the key factors used in the literature. Finally, we discuss the need for ineffective cases to learn from effective and trigger ones.

To what extent do regions in different member states of the European Union benefit from Cohesion Policy? A spatial regression discontinuity design approach offers distinct but fully comparable estimates of regional impacts for each individual member state. Cohesion Policy has a positive European Union-wide impact on regional growth and
employment. However, a large part of the growth bonus is concentrated in Germany, while impacts on employment are confined to the UK. The picture in Southern Europe is less rosy. In Italy, positive impacts on employment do not survive the Great Recession, while in Spain economic growth benefits are limited to the recovery period.

The aim of this paper is to examine the role of the payments from the European
Cohesion Policy (ECP) in the business cycle synchronisation of the EU–28 countries in the time period 2000–2016. The emphasis is especially placed on the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, given their status as the biggest ECP recipients; we investigate whether the ECP can serve as an instrument to promote their synchronisation which presents one of the prerequisites for the adoption of common monetary policy in the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU).

One could thus expect that Cohesion Policy has a significant positive impact on the ways in which citizens perceive the EU. But what happens when a country is a net contributor to the EU’s budget receiving a relatively small amount of Cohesion Policy funding, the bulk of it being invested in poorer European territories? Building on the cases of two Dutch regions – Flevoland and Limburg – this paper investigates the extent to which the citizens are aware of Cohesion Policy interventions and how the features of communication on and implementation of Cohesion Policy affect this awareness .

To integrate analysis of implementation and communication, we develop a novel qualitative framework that elicits a holistic analysis of the causal mechanisms behind: (i) the distribution of the Cohesion Policy funds, their management at a local managing authority level and the related impact on projects’ quality, and (ii) the communication processes that underpin citizens’ awareness about the Union’s role in funded projects. The multilevel nature and the dynamic behaviour of the system, as well as its multiple feedback loops, render System Dynamics as the appropriate approach to model its complexity. The proposed framework aims at stimulating a focused discussion on Cohesion Policy through providing policy-making insights for designing efficient schemes to improve not only actual performance but, more importantly, perceived performances, as well as for supporting research in the field from a new organisational point of view.

This article contributes to the literature on EU’s territorial cohesion policies by tracing the ways in which territorial cohesion has been defined, framed and justified as an EU policy. We analyse public speeches made by the acting commissioners for Regional Policy and inquire into the Cohesion Reports from 2004 to 2017 produced by the European Commission. In particular, we interrogate both the meaning of the concept of territorial cohesion and the justifications for pursuing territorial cohesion. We conclude with some critical remarks on the relevance of economic production-based definitions and justifications for territorial cohesion policies. Accordingly, we argue that treating macroeconomic production as an indicator of territorial cohesion harmfully consolidates a narrow understanding of societal wellbeing and development and imposes on all regions a one-dimensional economic scale to indicate their level of development.