ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the fourth stage of the EU cohesion policy cycle: the actual putting into effect of a policy by deploying financial and regulatory instruments. So this stage is very much about questions of governance. Getting governance right is not easy. Decades of practice with the operations of the SCF have shown that it is even more complicated in the multilevel framework of the EU cohesion policy. The architecture of the system does permit a lot of leeway to national and local actors. This entails the risk of loss of effectiveness due to a distortion of the policy as the agents responsible for the implementation are tempted to use the EU resources for national or local objectives.1
