Cohesion Policy Within the Lisbon Paradigm

Abstract:     
The paper examines the Lisbon Strategy of European Union and Cohesion Policy of European Union with the aim of understanding collaborative dimensions in line with being knowledge societies and coping with international competitiveness. While the year of 2005 reflects a re-launch of the Lisbon Strategy in the sense of a more regulated and coordinated common policy at the top of the pyramid, the 2006 Regulations of Cohesion Policy might be considered a second great step-forward following the 1988 Reform in terms of efficiency and relevancy to the developmental conundrums and challenges of the EU Member States. The Cohesion Policy has been essentially amalgamated under the Lisbon Strategy since both two aims sustainable growth and anticipating implications such as employment and added value increases.

Given that effectiveness and efficiency considerations with regard to competitiveness and innovative activities are best enabled at local level, in on-going new programming era, decentralized governance structure of the Cohesion Policy has been retained the same. The governance and coordination architecture of the Lisbon Agenda have invaluable insights from the credentials of the Cohesion Policy. Notably the open method of coordination mechanism, a new mode of governance, is developing on the background of voluntary Cohesion Policy practices between and among the Member States under supervision of the Commission. Within the Strategy framework, Member States' role lies in co-operating other Member States along with delivering a state-of-the-art reform agenda.

There is a constant need for more fundamental reform on the Cohesion Policy field. To assess its effects on the Lisbon Strategy objectives, further evaluation results will be sources because of the adaptation of the Member States has been occurring in slow pace and the delivery of the Lisbon Strategy has just began at the second haft of the 2000s.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 16

Keywords: Lisbon Strategy, EU Cohesion Policy, European Union, governance, open method of coordination mechanism

JEL Classification: D02, P11, P16, E61, R11

working papers series