ABSTRACT
Throughout the 1990s, for policy-makers across the EU the place of the region prompts a range of questions. What are the most effective measures for reducing regional social and economic disparities across the EU? How can regional politicians best contribute to policy-making at the level of the EU? What form should the dialogue take between regional and national government with respect to national positions on EU business? What is the potential impact of the widening membership of the EU for regions, especially those with more serious economic and social difficulties, within existing member states? These are policy matters about which there is a great deal of dispute and which, due in part to the specificity of national arrangements over regional government, it is impossible to speak of uniform regional or national responses (see Keating 1998). What is clear, however, is that the trajectory of European integration over the past two decades has pushed issues relating to the role of regions in this larger process and, in turn, its impact on regions, increasingly on to the political agenda. In drawing attention to some of the key dimensions of this changing climate we settle on three issues: first, the evolution of an EU regional policy since the late-1980s; second, the implications of the Structural Funds; and finally, the role of regional politicians and organisations within the policy-making processes at the level of the EU.
