Abstract

The size of EU budget devolved to the health emergency and the recession caused by the pandemic, and the new policy governance in the scope of the massive Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) have sparked once again debate on the effectiveness of cohesion policies in the economy. In this paper, we illustrate the evolution of the EU cohesion policy in the last 60 years, EU regional disparities, and the emergent risk for regional development traps. Then, we discuss the empirical literature on the effectiveness of the EU cohesion policy, measuring the outcome on growth, employment, and productivity. Many authors find a positive impact, revealing that the effectiveness of the cohesion policy depends on conditioning factors such as the quality of regional institutions and human capital endowment. Considering the multilevel governance in the current architecture of the cohesion policy, the role of national and subnational Governments emerges as a key factor for the effective deployment of EU programmes, as well as the pivotal role played by the human capital of the public administration.