ABSTRACT
A remarkable phenomenon presents itself right at the start of the investigation: the absence of a distinguished regional question from much of the European integration debate right up to the late 1980s. The belonging of regions to states as the key actor in European politics for the best part of the last two centuries has brought the regions and ‘stateless nations’ (Nagel, 1994) right into the maze of European power politics, but usually as objects rather than subjects acting on their own accord. Until the 1960s, the EU followed this trend as many member states regarded the ‘regional question’ as one of only domestic concern (Loughlin, 1996), to be dealt with as seen fit by the member states’ individual governments. The result of this was the absence of a distinct EU regional policy beyond some general provisions designed to facilitate economic cohesion, as planned and implemented by the member states’ governments. It was not until the 1970s that the EU ‘discovered’ its regions-and then only in an economic sense, as having different problems and needs (Loughlin, 1995).
