Synthesis Report - European Commission - Europa

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Synthesis Report Ex-post Evaluation of the ERDF 2000-2006 Even if priority is given to economic considerations, there is no compelling evidence to suggest that concentrating resources in existing agglomerations is most likely to yield the best return in terms of growth in the longer-term, whatever its short-term merits. As the Barca report points out 5 , existing agglomerations are not necessarily the result of market forces, a tangible demonstration that such a concentration represents the most efficient spatial distribution of economic activity. Since most agglomerations tend to have been artificially created by government intervention in the past, stimulating the development of a new centre of economic activity may be no less an effective use of funds than deploying them to strengthen an existing one. This is especially the case if a long-term perspective is taken. The argument in favour of supporting existing centres of economic activity is not only that this represents the best strategy for the region, or country, to achieve a high rate of short-run growth, but that it is also the best one in the long-term because growth will ‘trickle down’ to other areas. The evidence for this, however, is limited and even if it should eventually occur, the approach runs the risk of worsening social cohesion and engendering instability and political unrest before it does so. In practice, whatever the merits of one approach over the other, social cohesion considerations tend to push governments, both regional and national, to seek to reduce regional disparities in infrastructure endowment and public and other essential services of various kinds across regions, so that particular areas are not disadvantaged in these terms. Whether or not such an allocation of funding conflicts with the pursuit of sustainable development over the long-term is by no by means clear, irrespective of its possible effect in slowing down growth in the short-term. 1.1.9 The regional dimension of policy Cohesion policy as conducted through the ERDF is essentially about reducing imbalances between regions. This includes, imbalances within regions defined at the NUTS 2 level as well as between them. Although changes in disparities at the NUTS 2 level have tended to be how cohesion policy as a whole is judged, the logic of the Objective 2 approach in the 20002-2006 programming period is that the situation in small regions below the NUTS 2 level is also important. It can be argued further that the sustained growth of any particular region defined at the NUTS 2 level is dependent on maintaining a certain balance between the different areas which it comprises. Indeed, sustainable development, in addition to the preservation of the natural environment and the avoidance of excessive depletion of exhaustible resources, could be defined to incorporate this condition, as well as perhaps avoiding excessive disparities between social groups within each of the areas concerned 6 . What kind of balance should be maintained and, accordingly, what kind of policy should be adopted in pursuit of this, however, varies between regions according to their specific characteristics. A related point is that, in many cases, NUTS 2 regions correspond with neither functional, or economic, regions nor administrative regions. In these cases, the appropriate regional level for development policy to be determined differs from that which is the focus of cohesion policy at EU level. This is reflected, as indicated in Chapter 2 below, in commuting being on a significant scale 5 Fabrizio Barca, An agenda for a reformed cohesion policy, April 2009. 6 The study of sustainable development as part of Work Package 11 adopted such a wide definition. 20
Ex-post Evaluation of the ERDF 2000-2006 Synthesis Report in the case of many of the regions concerned. As a consequence, GDP per head in these regions no longer reflects their relative prosperity 7 . 1.1.10 The scale of funding Just over a quarter of the population in the EU15 lived in regions which received Objective 1 funding over the 2000-2006 period, while 21% lived in areas eligible for Objective 2 support (Table 1.1). In the EU10 countries, all regions were eligible for Objective 1 except Praha, Cyprus and Bratislava, in each of which around 30% of the population lived in areas receiving funding under Objective 2. In total, therefore, some 37% of the EU25 population were covered by Objective 1 from mid-2004 onwards after the EU10 countries had entered the Union. Table 1.1 Population covered by Objective 1 and 2, 2000-2006 % population Objective 1 Objective 2 BE 12.3 14.3 DK 12.5 DE 17.9 15.5 IE 100.0 GR 100.0 ES 58.7 21.5 FR 4.7 33.9 IT 33.4 14.9 LU 25.6 NL 2.2 18.1 AT 3.4 28.8 PT 100.0 FI 19.8 32.6 SE 10.6 15.8 UK 11.9 27.3 EU15 26.0 21.9 CY 28.7 CZ 96.4 3.6 SK 96.7 3.3 EU10 95.4 4.6 EU25 37.2 21.1 Note: Population in Objective 2 phasing-out regions is weighted by the amount of funding per head received relative to that received in Objective 2 regions eligible for full funding to allow for the relatively small amount of funding involved. EU10 countries not shown were eligible for Objective 1 funding in all regions. Source: Calculations based on DG Regio data. 7 As indicated in Chapter 2, in regions with significant net inward commuting, a sizable number of the people who generate the GDP live outside the region and accordingly are not counted in the population over which GDP per head is measured. Conversely, in regions with significant net outward commuting, the GDP which commuters are responsible for generating occurs outside the region and so is not counted in the measurement of GDP per head of the region concerned, which therefore understates the income which people living in the region have access to. 21
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