"Coordinating Regional Policy in the EU"

[From the Introduction]. EU regional policy is an instrument to promote development in economically weaker areas of Europe as well as to facilitate integration and ensure the success of the single market (European Commission, 2003). The territorial nature of EU regional policy demands complex coordination among various levels of government as well as across several policy sectors. Coordination, however, is often unsuccessful. Vertical coordination, inherently necessary for regional policy, is often precluded due to power struggles among supranational, national and regional governments. Likewise, conflicting policy goals and competing interests across policy sectors curtails the achievement of cross-sectoral coordination. Challenges to cross-sectoral coordination often arise since regional policy, based upon redistribution and Keynesian economics, has found itself at odds with underlying principles of the EU, namely neo-liberalism and free market competition