EU Cohesion Policy can't buy me love? Exploring the regional determinants of EU image

Abstract

By investing in the development of European territories, EU Cohesion Policy can be expected to have a positive impact on the citizens' views on the European Union. Whether and how the policy actually affects what people think about the EU remains unclear. This paper explores a range of regional determinants of EU image, from socio‐economic to territorial factors and the intensity of EU Cohesion Policy funding, based on the data available for 2008–2015 period. It finds a positive relation between the size of the regional European Structural and Investment Funds' allocation and less negative EU image, while highlighting how a declining regional economic situation fuels more negative views on the EU. It also reveals that lower level of education and higher migration have a strong influence on negative EU image, albeit only in some European regions.

From Cohesion Policy Implementation to European Identity

“…Dąbrowski, Stead, and Masshoodi () study the impact of regional objective socioeconomic factors on individuals' perception of the EU. Their findings demonstrate that both institutional quality and the access to services of general interest are positively associated to the support to the EU.…”

“…Taken together, the results from these studies support the general messages and policy implications discussed in the previous section. Cohesion Policy could be a powerful tool for promoting European identity, if the target of reduction of inequality within the EU is achieved (Aiello et al, ; Capello & Perucca, ; Dąbrowski et al, ). At the same time, however, this is likely to happen only if effective strategies of information, communication and involvement will be developed and implemented (Brasili et al, ; López‐Bazo & Royuela, ; Smętkowski & Dąbrowski, ).…”

Cohesion Policy and the citizens’ perceptions of the EU: the role of communication and implementation

“…Last but not least, we confirmed that the scale of funding also matters. Even though previous research suggested that the relationship between magnitude of funding and support for the EU is not straightforward (see Aiello, Reverberi, and Brasili 2019;Capello and Perucca 2019;Dąbrowski, Stead, and Mashhoodi 2019;Smętkowski and Dąbrowski 2019), the evidence from from stakeholder interviews and focus groups conducted, does suggest that the relatively small allocation of funding to the Dutch regions is hardly noticeable and can only have a limited impact on for positive EU identification. One of its anticipated effects of Cohesion Policy is to foster greater citizen attachment to the EU.…”

“…While this has become an emerging research topic (e.g. Aiello, Reverberi, and Brasili 2019;Capello and Perucca 2019;Dąbrowski, Stead, and Mashhoodi 2019;Dijkstra, Poelman, and Rodríguez-Pose 2019), with a growing number of studies exploring the patterns and drivers of EU support in regions mainly in 'large-n' quantitative research, there is still a knowledge gap concerning the regional dimension of the citizens' perceptions of the EU and the role of Cohesion Policy in shaping them. This paper seeks to address this knowledge gap and innovate by exploring this topic through mixed methods case study research and by looking into regions receiving relatively little Cohesion Policy funding, while most of the literature on Cohesion Policy focuses on regions being major beneficiaries of EU funding.…”

“…However, there is a relationship between EU Cohesion Policy investment across the European regions and support for the EU, even if it is strong mainly in less developed regions that have benefited from more substantial amounts of EU funding and where citizens are more likely to have benefited from EU-funded projects (Borz, Brandenburg, and Mendez 2018). Others quantitative studies found that the more funding from Cohesion Policy a region receives the less widespread the negative image of the EU is among its population (Dąbrowski, Stead, and Mashhoodi 2019). By contrast, qualitative research showed that only a minority of citizens considered that Cohesion Policy had an impact on their feelings towards the EU, while in some cases that impact could be negative if the funding was perceived not to address the actual local needs (Pegan, Mendez, and Triga 2018).…”