European Cohesion And Funding Policies

The first chapter is divided into two sections; the first section aims to present the
most important steps toward the current systems of European Cohesion and Funding Policies,
and the second section summarizes the main funding streams of the current cohesion
policy. In addition, in the second part, the linkage between the different financial instruments
and the objectives of Structural Fund assistance is clarified.
The second chapter examines the effectiveness and efficiency of the cohesion policy in reducing
regional disparities, with a reference to the preceding funding period. Due to the
restriction on the length of in this paper, the reduction of regional disparities will be assessed
by examining economic performance and employment according to the objectives
of the cohesion policy and its financial instruments.
Due to the difficulties in separating the contributions of the cohesion policy from the
overall effects of progress, the achievements of the Lisbon objectives will be scrutinized in
the following section. Selected Structural Indicators will be examined to remark
on the progress in the set key areas.
The following section aims to conduct a partial examination of the impact and weaknesses of
pre-accession assistance. Examining the question of institutional and administrative capacity
building, the section will scrutinize the development of economic performance of
and employment levels in the new Member States in the 2000–2006 funding period.
The objective of the preceeding chapter is to determine the impacts of the Europe 2020 objectives
on cohesion policy, examine the adequacy of established goals, and compare the
Europe 2020 objectives with those of the Lisbon Strategy.
The objective of the last section is to analyze the proposals for a reformed cohesion
policy as submitted in the BARCA report. Therefore, the advantages and disadvantages
that appears when considering the proposals will be discussed. In addition, the main differences
with the current practice will be considered.