Closing the prosperity gap between regions has always been a key political aspiration of the European Union - and cohesion policy is the primary means to achieve that goal. Europe is currently undergoing a digital and green transition that is drastically changing the way its economy works. How...

Productivity-enhancing structural reforms are crucial to the economic prospects of the EU. Indeed, such reforms are even more urgent in the current environment in which many economies are reaching the limits of the policy support they can provide to shore up demand. Moreover, even as some of the...

The European Structural and Investment Funds make up more than 40% of the EU budget and are thereby the EU’s most important financial support to growth, employment, investment and structural change. The funds are programmed for (overlapping) seven-year periods, and all programmes for the new...

Ensuring active ageing, i.e. the optimisation of opportunities for health, participation and security in order to enhance quality of life as people age, is an important growth strategy for the EU. Achieving a successful active ageing policy will require a sea change in thinking about what ageing...

Convergence among regions is explicitly defined as a political aim of the European Union. Overall, NUTS3 regions have indeed shown a path of convergence since the year 2000, but there are huge differences among the regions. Many Eastern European countries as well as several regions in Spain and...