ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights in more detail the relationship between the European Commission and the Portuguese national administration and then discusses the Common Support Frameworks, which will be followed by a more thorough evaluation. The structural funds became a major innovative element in the overall public policy of the European Union, legitimized by the fact that proper implementation of the structural funds would lead to a stronger even more single European market. A region was regarded as having a strategic interest as ally to the European Commission in order to gain more maneuver in terms of developing its own long-term policies, naturally within the parameters set up by the state. Delorsism clearly had a special agenda of promoting a more offensive role for the Commission in the field of public policy. One major problem that was partly solved in Common Support Framework III is the high level of concentration/centralization in the management structures.
