A COHESION PACT FOR THE REGIONS

Leslie Budd

Policy Studies, 2007, vol. 28, issue 4, 347-363

Abstract: The Lisbon Agenda of 2000 and the supporting Sapir and Kok Reports have set the parameters of economic policy in the European Union (EU) in the medium term. The asymmetric regime of economic governance locks manifold regions and industries into an inflexible and unbalanced policy environment so that the objectives of Lisbon may be difficult to achieve. The monetary straitjacket of the euro, buttressed by the Maastricht Treaty and the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) fiscal conditions, limits the degree to which competitiveness and cohesion may be delivered, particularly in an expanded Union. This article explores these issues of economic governance in the EU in order to investigate the possibility of a ‘cohesion pact for the regions’ which places a more comprehensive industrial policy as the fulcrum for achieving a better balance between growth and cohesion. Operating within an Open Method of Coordination (OMC) framework and by linking industrial policy instruments to a system of fiscal federalism, a more flexible and balanced regime of economic governance may ensue, one in which the ambitious objectives of the Lisbon Agenda may start to be achieved or at least moved towards more efficaciously.

Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01442870701640724 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cposxx:v:28:y:2007:i:4:p:347-363

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/cpos20

DOI: 10.1080/01442870701640724

Access Statistics for this article

Policy Studies is currently edited by Toby James

More articles in Policy Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().