Does the Cohesion Policy Decrease Economic Inequalities in the European Union?

This paper examines the impact of the EU Cohesion Policy on the relative development of EU countries as well as on the development of NUTS-2 regions within member states. The main hypothesis is that the Cohesion Fund payments are reducing inequalities between member states, while failing to decrease the regional inequalities within member states in the European Union. The basic conclusion is that Cohesion funds should not be viewed as the only solution for the problem of regional inequalities in the EU, but rather as a complementary policy instrument to national regional policies. However, the problem of creating institutional capacity for the withdrawal of the Cohesion resources remains emphasized, especially in new member states with lower real GDP growth, in order to compete for projects of highest multiplicative effects on the economy