Encarnación Murillo, Cristina Garcia (p), Milagros Paniagua

The convergence principle has been present since the configuration of regional policy. The accession of ten new Member States in 2004 and the definitive economic globalization placed the European Union in the challenge of redefining itself in its economic and, in part, political development. In this process, based on the Lisbon Strategy (2000) and finalized with the Europe 2020 Strategy (2010), the objective of competitiveness has been a priority in the design of the new cohesion policy. The fundamental change occurred when the regional policy was conditioned to the macroeconomic framework, which affected the definition of its budget. Thus, the new economic governance, macroeconomic stability and the Lisbon Strategy will be the pillars on which cohesion policy is based.
The objective of this work is to analyze the impact of the conceptual modification. Our interest is in the allocation of funds to the different programs. And, especially, in the case of Spain, whose funds have been considerably reduced. To this end, we will begin by presenting a review of the evolution of cohesion policy, as well as the situation of the distribution of the Structural and Investment Funds throughout the European Union. Subsequently, we will carry out, for the Spanish case, an empirical study of the allocation of these funds among the different objectives during the current programming period.

Philippe Monfort (p)

This paper analyses the impact of the 2007-2013 European Union cohesion policy programmes. Between 2007 and 2015, more than €300 billion were injected in the economies of the Union through the Structural and Cohesion Funds, providing support for investments in fields such as transport, social and environmental infrastructure, human capital, R&D and innovation or aid to SMEs. The policy is to a large extent implemented at the regional level and its impact is assessed by using RHOMOLO, a regional dynamic computable general equilibrium model which produces its results at the NUTS-2 level. The main findings suggest that the impact of the policy is positive and significant, particularly in the regions which have substantially benefited from the funding. The model also highlights that the policy has strong spatial spill-overs which implies that programmes have an impact way beyond the boundaries of the regions where they are implemented. This partly explains why the impact remains positive even in regions which are net contributors to the policy.

Jonathan Desdemoustier (p), Nathalie Crutzen

See extended abstract

Ron Boschma (p), Pierre-Alex Balland, David Rigby

See extended abstract