*Celebrating Spatial Planning at TU Delft: 2008-2019. Edited by Stead, Bracken, Rooij & Rocco

34 Spatial Planning & Strategy
Cohesify
Understanding the Impact of EU Cohesion
Policy on European Identification (2016-2018)
MARCIN DABROWSKI
Fig. 13: The COHESIFY team. Photo by: M. Dabrowksi.
Can EU money buy EU love?
The COHESIFY project, lead
by the European Policies
Research Centre at the University
of Strathclyde and involving eight
universities and two companies,
explored whether and how EU
Cohesion policy spending across
differentiated regions affected the
citizens’ perceptions of the European
integration project. In particular,
the project investigated how, on
the one hand, (1) the ways in which
the funding is used and its results
communicated; and, on the other
hand, (2) the characteristics of the
regions where it is used (territorial,
socio-economic, institutional), affect
the ways in which the citizens
perceive the EU.
It was based on truly cross-disciplinary
research, bringing together
geographers, political scientists,
regional and urban scholars, policy,
communication and media experts,
from both academia and practice. It
was also built on a unique combination
of research methods, from
surveys and statistical analysis,
interviews and surveys with regional
policy stakeholders, focus groups
with citizens, to novel methods for
framing analysis in traditional and
social media.
Given that the declining support for
European integration in the wake
of multiple crises engulfing the EU
is very high on the political agenda,
COHESIFY not only produced
new insights on the topic, but also
attracted substantial interest from
European policy-makers. As part of
the project, our team carried out
two case studies in the Dutch provinces
of Flevoland and Limburg,
developed a regional typology of
EU identification, and shed light
on the regional determinants of EU
image.