2. Urban policy

Launching a 'European Platform against Poverty', cities require special attention. Between 1994 and 2006, the EU with the URBAN programs has already made a major effort to tackle the problem in 15 member states:
-  spending 1.6 billion euros
-  targeting 5.2 million inhabitants
-  in 188 (actually 190) urban areas
The European Union, without a specific mandate for urban policy, has 'leapfrogged' again the member states and in a way even city government down to urban areas. Most member countries, anayway did not have national urban policies. There are only five major exceptions to this, to wit Denmark, France, Ireland, The Netherlands and the UK (Germany has an urban policy at the regional level).
The key words of the URBAN rationale are: multidimensional deprivation, integrated area approach, and citizen participation. See the evaluation by GHK (2003) and the re-evaluation by Drewe (2008).
The 'troubled urban areas', eligible for URBAN I were required to have the following socio-economic characteristics: high level of unemployment; decayed urban fabric; bad housing conditions; lack of social amenities.As to URBAN II, nine criteria have been applied: high long-term unemployment; low rate of economic activity; high level of poverty and exclusion; the need for structural adjustment; high proportion of immigrants, ethnic minorities and refugees; low level of education, major gaps in terms of qualification and high rate of pupil failure; high level of criminality and delinquency; unstable demographic development; particularly poor environmental conditions.

Personal income per capita can already tell a different story being defined as 'an individual's total income from wages, passive enterprises, and investment interest and dividends (). The argument has been made by Davezies (2008) for France. His thesis,for the time being, seems to hold primarily for richer (capital) regions such as Ile de France. Davezies' thesis is thatb the rest of France, referred to as the French desert, is better off than the capital region in terms of personal income if one takes into account: public employment expenditures; pensions, commuter revenues, and torist spending; social ytransfers other than pensions. For the system to remain durable, it is vital that Ile de France maintains its top position as creator of wealth. France cannot live on income transfer alone. But, gradually, GDP creation may shift to the rest of France.
Regions cannot live on income transfer alone. Hence the importance of boosting innovation as a way out of the present crisis (Drewe, 2010a,b). A 'sluggish recovery', leave alone a 'lost decade' are not very promising scenarios. Much will depend on the Flagship Initiative 'Innovation Union' (European Commission, 2010).
Personal income per capita still menas that prosperity or poverty are measured in monetary terms. For many years now scholars and international organizations have pleaded for the use of non-monetary indicators (closer to social cohesion) that is: happiness, well-being, quality of life, satisfaction, human development and the like (see ). Creating alternative national and regional accounts:
-  one may obtain a more balanced and intellectually more satifying view on cohesion: without overestimating the real wealth by taking into account social costs, but also without estimating it by includig social benefits (social costs and benefits relate to production, distribution and consumption).
- but one may also console the 'monetary' poor that they are not so poor or even rich in other ways. By doing so, however, one ignores the difference between absolute and relative poverty (or the relevance of reference groups).
At the end of the day, the nitty-gritty of social cohesion pivots on (un)employment, in particular on youth and long-term unemployment. What yardstick to adopt for regional disparities (another EU-27=100?) and what eligibility threshold?

At present, EU member states have rather embarked on a 'National preference' scenario which, in principle. agrees with a national cohesion policy (see for this and alternative scenarios Drewe, 2006). Nevertheless, being 'European' is attractive, 'because, that's where the money is (paraphrasing the so-called Sutton principle: regional policy is the EU's second largest budget with 348 billion euros (2006 prices). If it does not achieve so much national cohesion, it can achieve a different kind of chosesion as shown, for example, by the benefits drawn by EU-15 countries from cohesion policy implementation in Poland. But note also that Delors (2010) has suggested to deprive member states, partially and temporarily, from Structural Fund support as a sanction for violating the stability pact.


The single most popular yardstick of regional disparities at EU level is per capita GDP (Gross Domestic Product) measured in terms of purchasing power parity. GDP is defined as 'the total market value of all final goods and services produced in country in a given year, equal to consumer, investment and government spending , plus the value of exports, minus the value of imports' ( ). The disparity yardstick, strictly speaking, is the index EU-27=100 plus the eligibility threshold of 75%. There is the danger of committing several fallacies here: a fallacy of disaggregation, jumping from the EU to the regional level; a fallacy of average, assuming that an average EU-27=100 somewhere exists; and fallacy of misplaced concreteness, fixing the magic number of 75.
A national cohesion policy is faced for example with the fact that GDP per capita in the capital city of Warsaw is four times higher than per capita GDP in Eastern Poland (in 2007), Warsaw is the reference region for Eastern Poland, not some poorer regions im Romania or Bulgaria.
GDP measures income where it is produced, not where it is spent. It is therefore more suited for measuring primarily economic cohesion or as a proxy of competitivity.

Our focus is on 'economic and social cohesion and solidarity' and on cohesion policy. As with any policy, a critical evaluation covers four basic questions:

-  how to define cohesion?

-  how to measure cohesion?

-  how to explain cohesion?

-  how to stimulate cohesion?

Joseph Stiglitz wrote ' If you don't measure the right thing, you don't do the right thing'. But before measuring the right thing, one must, first of all, define the right or real thing.

1. Regional policy

Striving for cohesion at the regional level, the Eu is kind of leapfrogging the member states. The latter are closer to disparities, the diversity of their constituent regions and their development potential. And as subsidiarity is not restricted to the relation between member states and the EU - but rather starts at home - one could also imagine,  first of all, a national cohesion or regional policy. For example, an Italian policy to tackle the 'Gordian knot' of the Mezzogiorno. If there are indeed other 'mezzogiornos', a Polish cohesion policy is required to deal with Eastern Poland or a German policy to with regard to Eastern Germany (Kuklinski, Malak-Petlicka & Zuber, 2010). Even in a small country like Belgium. 'the landscape of economic mass is bumpy' (The World Bank,2009: 50). Belgium certainly has a real problem of national cohesion.

Only if member states prove unable to deal adequately with their internal cohesion, the European Union should intervene. The current predicament of the so-called PIIGS countries does not leave much room for a national cohesion policy, leave alone a high priority for national cohesion.

Cohesion or 'the solidarity that unites'

'My triptych as President of the European Commission was: the competition that stimulates, the cooperation that strengthens, and the solidarity that unites'
(Jacques Delors in an interview in Le Monde, December 3, 2009)
'Not only is the policy response in some measure determined by the problem definition, but this definition itself may be strongly influenced by what is conceived to be practicable in terms of policy response.This interaction, therefore, has produced a definition of urban deprivation that is compatible with practical policy expedients, and policy responses that give the impression of being solutions to the problem. Sadly, experience has shown both to be illusory.'
(John Edwards & Richard Batley, The politics of positive discrimination)

After reading Communications from the Commission or similar EU documents, modal citizens of the European Union may be 'lost in verbosity'. To them cohesion or solidarity may just sound like a perfume or a rockband...
Let us start from the EC Treaty. Article 2 summarizes nicely 'the European project'.
The Community shall have as its task, by establishing a common market and an economic monetary union and by implementing the common policies referred to in Article 3 and 3a, to promote throughout the Community a harmonious and balanced development of economic activities, sustainable and non-inflationary economic growth respecting the environment, a high degree of convergence, a high level of employment and of social protection, the raising of the standard of living and quality of life, and economic and social cohesion and solidarity among Member States (our emphasis).
This article promises many good things. But will they be delivered? And how do we know whether they have been delivered or not? In other words, how to measure the performance of the EU?