Synthesis Report - European Commission - Europa

Ex-post Evaluation of the ERDF 2000-2006
Synthesis Report
1.3 ALLOCATION OF ERDF FUNDING BETWEEN TYPES OF AREA
The evaluation was concerned to examine not only the allocation of ERDF funding between policy
areas but also between types of geographical area at a more detailed level than NUTS 2 regions.
The question addressed was whether there was a relative concentration of the expenditure
financed by the ERDF in rural areas or urban areas. The analysis was conducted at a NUTS 3
regional level and was concerned not only with the total amount of expenditure financed under
Objective 1 and Objective 2 but also how this was divided between policy areas in the different
types of region.
The NUTS 3 regions were grouped into types of area according to the OECD classification system.
Under this system, regions are defined as being predominantly urban, intermediate or rural
depending on the proportion of population living in small areas, or what are termed ‘local units’,
where population density is above or below a 150 people per square km (see Box). Rural and
intermediate regions can be further divided into those which are close to a city and, therefore,
have access to the services and amenities – as well as jobs – which it can provide, and those
which are more remote, which essentially have to be more reliant on local services and jobs.
Box – Definition of types of area
The basis of the OECD classification of regions is the ‘local unit’, a small area for which there are at
least some data for all EU Member States and which corresponds to a commune or district. NUTS 3
regions are divided in the following way between types of area:
• rural areas, if more than half of the population of the region live in local units with population
density below 150 per square km
• predominantly urban areas, if 85% or more people live in local units with a population density
of over 150 per square km
• intermediate areas, if 50-85% or more live in local units with population density of over 150
per square km.
The last two types of area can be further divided between those which are close to a city and those
which are more remote. Specifically, the former are defined as areas where at least half the
population can reach a town or city of over 100,000 people in less than an hour, which implies they
have relatively easy access to a reasonable range of support services and amenities, the latter as
those for which this is not the case.
1.3.1 Objective 1 regions in the EU15
Given that rural areas tend on average to lag behind more urban ones in terms of their GDP per
head (partly, it should be noted, because of the depressing effect of outward commuting on this),
it would be expected that much of the financial support provided by the ERDF went to such
regions. In fact, over the 2000-2006 period as a whole, almost EUR 25 billion of the total amount
of ERDF support to Objective 1 regions in the EU15 went to NUTS 3 regions defined as being
rural. This represents some 27% of the total funding from this source, almost twice the
proportion of population of the countries concerned living in these regions (just under 15%),
signalling that there was indeed a relative concentration of financial support in rural areas (Table
1.10, in which the data are based on commitments up to the end of 2006).
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