Alleviating the disparities among the European Community regions

Abstract

In this work the author identifies the existing disparities among the European Community regions and analyzes their development during the last decade (1980-90), with main emphasis on the disparities between the Community lagging regions and the rest of the Community. The author also evaluates the effects of the Community regional policy on the elimination of these disparities, and suggests possible ways to improve the policy's effectiveness. There are two research questions addressed and analyzed in this work. The first question is whether the disparities among the Community regions have decreased during the last decade, and the second question is how successful the Community regional policy has been in alleviating these disparities. For the analysis of these research questions the author has conducted three case studies, focusing on the three poorest Community regions, Greece, Ireland and Portugal. The main finding of the analysis is that the Community regional policy has been relatively successful in reducing the disparities among the Community regions during the last decade (1980-90), as the enlargement of the European Community with the accession of Greece, Portugal, and Spain has caused a considerable increase of the economic disparities between the stronger and weaker Community regions. Thus, despite a favorable trend towards gradual convergence on the Community average in some lagging regions during the last decade, in the 1990s wide disparities continue to exist among the European Community regions.