The Reforms And Impacts Of The European Regional Policy

Within European Union (EU) policy framework,the regional policy turns out tobe of essentiality,and the in-depth comprehension of which is quite important beforeyou can have an insight of where the unification of Europe might go,and along withwhat uneasiness.This dissertation unfolds the study of EU regional policy by lookingat two compelling spheres:reforms and impacts.At the wake of European enlargement and the increasing world competitionbrought up by globalization,EU regional policy,from taking shape back to 1970's,has been through several mile-stone reforms in 1988,1999 and 2004-2006,before itstands quite competent and mature nowadays.Something coherent could be spotted:the due-target of"cohesion"and"competitiveness"has been consolidating,formalities haven been simplifying,EU herself and states,regions within it havegained more"engagement"among one another while the specific function of eachbetter defined.The study of impacts lies in three dimensions:one is economy and social impact,two,the territorial and spatial impact,three,the institutional impact.The economy,social and territorial impact reflects that,judging by the EU herself and taking intoconsideration of neoclassical economics theory,endogenous economic growth theoryand new geographical economics theory by economists,no conclusion optimisticenough can be arrived when the EU regional policy is under scrutiny.The"territorial"and"spatial"tendency has become more conspicuous not only in the assessment ofEU regional policy but also in the EU development process.Generally the disparityamong EU states has been decreased while the same is increased to regions withinevery state.However that doesn't eclipse the success of those policies,which did helpto prevent the regional inequality from becoming worse.The"institution impact"canbe described by the"regionalization"of member states under the efforts of EU.The"failure"of east/middle European states like Poland when"regionalized"suggestedthat no such an"Europeanization""model"exists,and EU shall pay more respect tothe"diversity"of each state.Meanwhile,the difficulty in European"regionalization"processes makes us thinking about the relative position of'regional'level.It takes the"multi-level governance"to give a reasonable interpretation since it concerns theresource sharing between different levels and not the resource competition.At last but not the least,European regional policy could shed some"enlightenthinking"to regional development in China,when we talk about to trade off justiceand efficiency,to simplify formalities,to enhance cooperation at all levels,the"decentralization"and power clarification,to strengthen supervision and management,to correct the"omission"of law and regulation,etc.