ABSTRACT
The European Community,1 since its formation, has been the repository of the dreams of both utilitarians and utopians. The issue of regional development is one on which utilitarian and utopian views concomitantly coincide and collide. Though originally established as an economic entity the European Community has continually aspired to political unity while endeavouring to preserve the diversity of its component parts. The process of European integration has had both static and dynamic effects on its constituent regions with some regions being more affected than others. One approach to dealing with the uneven impact of integration has been the Community’s evolving regional policy, a policy which encompasses aspirations and actions aimed at reducing regional and social disparities. The rationale for Community regional policy has stemmed from normative, remedial, social, integrationist and economic motives. Among the changes wrought have been improvements in the economies and infrastructure of the Community’s poorer regions, adjustments in the relationship between national and subnational actors within the member states and the forging of new relationships between these actors and Community institutions and of¿ cials. No speci¿ c theoretical framework or even a synthesis of theoretical perspectives has served to explain fully the disparity of regional development within and between the Community’s member states.2 Regional policy as it has evolved within the Community does not ¿ t neatly into the intergovernmental, neo-functional or consociational ways of theorizing about the Community while the multilevel governance approach serves to describe the process but is not conducive to hypothesizing possible institutional outcomes. Yet, regional policy has served to redistribute resources, counter the negative aspects of integration, foster development, promote strategic planning and systematic procedures. encourage transnational and interinstitutional cooperation, expand the role of subnational authorities and embody solidarity between member states with such varying capacity and institutions. Bachtler and Turok assert that the structural and cohesion
policies of the Community ‘are among the most signi¿ cant areas of EU action in many respects. They have a direct impact on the lives of millions of citizens and may help to make the concept of Europe more meaningful to ordinary people’ (1997: 5). This chapter sets out to explore the conceptual and practical approaches to Community regional policy as they impinge on the ‘ordinary people’, the Europeans who make up the Community.
