Territorial Effects of the Structural Funds ESPON FINAL REPORT Presentation at the ESPON seminar May 2005 Consortium: Nordregio/Stockholm, Mcrit/Barcelona, EPRC/Glasgow, Infyde/Bilbao, ITPS/Stockholm, Systema/Athens, University of Utrecht, Margaret Hall Consulting and Peter Ache Consulting.

Presentation 1.Policy implications and recommendations 2.Areas of interest where TIA undertaken: nature and effects of the SF from the point of view of territorial cohesion and polycentricity, sector-specific differences and knowledge needs 3.Conclusions and further research questions

Main policy implications of the study Awareness of the shift in the nature of regional policy (both on EU, national and regional levels):  Structural Fund programmes: more regional than spatial = territorial cohesion and polycentricity only emergent themes, traditional concerns with lagging regions have dominated within SF programmes as regional development programmes Area designation as the key to polycentricity:  Inclusion and operationalisation of polycentricity necessitate more attention to maintaining FUAs intact and may require a more explicit inclusion of the themes in guidelines Future investment choices sector-specific:  Policy content and policy style matter: particular potential within functional specialisation and infrastructure (on meso and micro levels in particular), leverage effects need to be considered Knowledge needs?  Value added of SF and more focus on the effective utilisation of resources through increased focus on governance effects

Inclusion and operationalisation of polycentricity  In terms of spending polycentricity a ’non-issue’ between –17% went to already polycentric regions, 41 % to regions that are unlikely to show up in an European polycentric pattern  Meso and micro levels (i.e. individual programme levels) with most potential for polycentricity  Morphology and functional roles and profiles can be addressed in current Objective 1 and 2, in the future possibly even more central

Spending coincides with negative population development and poor accessibility

SF spending and regional economic performance – NUTS III picture  Few incidences where high expenditure coincides with high growth rates  High funding and higher than average economic growth – only 11% of EU-15 population  Mostly in southern European cohesion countries as well as in southern Italy and eastern Germany, including Berlin

Area designation and scale  Area designation one of the keys to polycentricity: positive cross-border spill-over visible, though at the same time – contradictory effects based on scale…  The scale of analysis important: regional socioeconomic “behavior” does not coincide markedly with amounts or levels of spending.  Contradictory results depending on the scale we are analysing: e.g. the virtual cross-border exercises visualise decreasing overall territorial cohesion, and on the other increasing territorial cohesion when measured on a cross-border micro or local scale.

Divergent patterns in the ’virtual border regions’:  Cross-border cohesion on the regional level seems to have increased during the programming period, in stark contrast to the simultaneous decrease in “general” interregional cohesion.  Accentuated differences: Regions along borders where the difference was fairly small have (on average) come closer to each other whereas the opposite holds true for borders where the economic gap was already large.  The single group of border regions displaying the worst possible scenario (=increasing disparity due to the richer becoming richer still and the poorer becoming poorer) are also those where the disparity was largest at the outset.

The European picture  Predominance of cohesion countries  Limitedness of the new funding to the new Member States  Common concern in the need to focus on developing institutional capacity, effective management, as well as effective targeting and sufficient concentration of funding

Policy sectors and governance aspects with particular potential  Area designation, effective management systems the ‘minimum requirements’ for achieving effects  Infrastructure and transport important on macro levels, functional specialisation on the meso and micro levels  Despite the limited quantitative effects, important qualitative effects have been identified relating to a number of areas at the micro level, such as: –The deployment of economic development resources; –The promotion of a strategic dimension in policy-making; –The introduction of new types of intervention; –Enhanced partnership; and –The promotion of new learning and innovation dynamics.

Conclusions and further research questions  The issue of scale emerges as particularly decisive  A comprehensive policy shift as to territorial policy – from policies targeting lagging regions to all regions, focus on potentials and competitiveness, at the same time as the volume decreases – methodologies, governance solutions and working practices one of the key issues  More focus on the effective utilisation of resources (elaboration and further development of, for instance, TIA as an instrument of analysis)  The potential of Interreg – in addition to exchange of experiences and identification of ‘best practices’, focus on TIA and cross-sectoral methodological development (e.g. behavioural additionality, governance)