Eu Cohesion Policy and European Integration: The Dynamics of Eu Budget and Regional Policy Reform by John Bachtler & Carlos Mendez

Author:John Bachtler & Carlos Mendez [Bachtler, John & Mendez, Carlos]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Economy, European, Political Science, World
ISBN: 9781317140443
Google: Bz8HDAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 30000511
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2002-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

National Interests in Cohesion Policy and the Positions of Member States

Introduction

The extensive literature on European Council negotiations has shed light on many factors that influence EU decision-making: domestic political constraints and administrative pressures; the role of European institutions; international political leadership; ‘meso-level’ informal bargaining among technocrats; trans-governmental cooperation; and coalition-building. The following two chapters explore the relevance of these factors in the context of Cohesion policy.

This chapter begins by examining how the policy positions of the EU25 Member States developed in the years leading up to the 2005 negotiations, focusing particularly on the most influential countries. National positions were often a composite of different institutional interests, sometimes with only a veneer of unity and, in a few cases, openly at odds with each other. This account sets the scene for Chapter 11 which explores how the different interests intersected in the course of the negotiations, culminating in the European Council meetings under the Luxembourg and United Kingdom Presidencies in 2005. During 2000–05, the common ground among EU Member States was limited to three broad issues: Cohesion policy was important for solidarity between richer and poorer parts of the EU; the less-developed regions were the main priority for funding; and policy administration needed to be simplified. The key differences related to the financial scale and geographical coverage of the policy, with four main groups of Member States: those in favour of a rationalising Cohesion policy (Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, United Kingdom, Denmark); those seeking to maintain policy support for lagging regions in southern Europe (Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy); those advocating a continuation of policy outside lagging regions (France, Belgium, Finland, Ireland); and the new Member States seeking ‘fair and equitable treatment’. There were also differences in the attitude of Member States to the value of the Funds: whereas countries such as France emphasised the positive aspects of the Structural Funds, the German approach focused on the need for comprehensive reform to improve the efficiency of the policy (Arnaud and Guder 2002).

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