Regional Economic Performance, Governance and Cohesion in an Enlarged Europe, 1999-2001

To discover whether Europe’s regional economies were moving closer together, or whether new geographical differences and inequalities were being created, this research concentrated on developed and less developed parts of four countries: England, Italy, Poland and Slovakia. Data were collected on the performance of regional economies in each country. A plant-level survey of 482 establishments was completed. Also completed were some 165 in-depth interviews with firms and regional development institutions (<i>these are not held at the UK Data Archive, for confidentiality reasons</i>).<br> <br> As far as disparities in economic development are concerned, the research confirmed a convergence of living standards between existing European Union (EU) Member States, combined with increasing geographical and social inequalities within them. Economic development gaps between East-Central Europe (ECE) and the EU increased until recently, while within ECE regional and social inequality also increased sharply.<br> <br> The research showed that the position of different regional economies is partly the result of the position of key regional producers in wider, pan-European and global production and value creating networks. More specifically, it identified a deepening division of labour as plants in different parts of Europe take on different yet complementary roles. In ECE plants specialise in assembly and export-production, while much of the design, styling, marketing and retailing (the knowledge-intensive parts of value chains and production networks) remains focused in the West. Nonetheless plants in ECE which became strongly integrated into pan-European production networks often witnessed quite considerable upgrading and improvement of capacity, technology and labour process. <br> <br> The research also identified a significant convergence of regional governance and regional development policy mechanisms across Europe, yet with marked differences in the performance of institutions and in the effectiveness of supply-side policy models in regional economies with quite distinct economic, political and cultural characteristics.<br> The project was based at the Centre on European Political Economy, Sussex European Institute, University of Sussex.<br> <br>