How can economic and social cohesion be strengthened after 2006?
Summary of a seminar organised in collaboration with the European Policy Centre and sponsored by the King Baudouin Foundation.

The issue of reforming the Structural Funds is a divisive one. The predictable shock of enlargement, the weight of vested interests and the inadequacy of the analytical tools available to challenge them have so far led the Commission and the Member States to maintain the status quo until 2006. However, as with the Common Agricultural Policy, this cautious wait-and-see approach must not lead to complacency, which would prevent any changes that might be needed to adapt to the realities of the present and the most foreseeable needs of the future.
Beyond political or tactical considerations, and even beyond the need to prepare for the arrival of new members before 2006, there is another way of questioning European cohesion policy.
This involves linking this policy to economic and social change and considering how to adapt instruments that have certainly proved their effectiveness – as demonstrated by the commitment of current beneficiaries – but in a different context.
Notre Europe and the European Policy Centre brought together around 15 experts for a seminar to discuss this issue.
The conclusion that emerges from this work is unambiguous. Since the mid-1980s, the development model of our economies has changed considerably. The ever-increasing role of intangible production factors is altering the conditions for the accumulation of wealth and giving rise to new forms of disparities between regions and social groups. The current cohesion policy instruments have not kept pace with these changes. They risk becoming unsuited to their purpose if they fail to take full account of the new causes of inequality that cannot be measured using traditional economic criteria, and if they fail to address these causes by intervening at an irrelevant geographical level or by focusing on physical infrastructure.