ABSTRACT
The European Union is confronted with considerable imbalances in wealth, both between countries and regions and between social groups. The functioning of the Union may decrease these unbalances as relatively poor countries and regions take advantage of the internal market for their development. However, it may also aggravate differences, when economic activities concentrate in well-developed regions. So, an EU policy oriented towards the prevention and reduction of imbalances has been set up: cohesion policy. Cohesion has no clear definition. 1 It is best understood as the degree to which disparities in social and economic welfare between different regions or groups within the European Union are politically and socially tolerable. Whether cohesion is achieved is thus largely a political question.
