Cohesion (politics)

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In politics, cohesion (from the Latin cohaerere “to be connected”) stands for the cohesion between individual states and regions. The term was largely developed by the European Union and focuses in particular on regional differences in terms of economic performance.

EU cohesion policy

Cohesion policy has been an important element of EU policy since the Single European Act (1986). It assumes that a redistribution should take place between richer and poorer regions in the EU in order to compensate for the consequences of the uneven economic development and thus to reduce regional disparities. With programs for cohesion policy , the EU for a total of around 500 billion euros invested from 1988 to 2004. Before the EU's eastward expansion , the recipients were mainly the southern EU regions and Ireland, and from 1990 also the new German federal states .

After the major EU expansion in 2004 by ten new, mainly Eastern European, member states, the development gap between the regions initially doubled. Most of the cohesion funds have been flowing to Eastern Europe since then. In the funding period 2007 to 2013, European cohesion policy distinguishes between two basic target regions : “Convergence” and “Regional competitiveness and employment”.

European cohesion policy has undergone numerous changes and reforms in its history. In the course of the enlargement of the European Union and deepening of integration, both the financial resources and the competencies of regional and structural policy have been expanded. Since 2007, there has been talk of a veritable “paradigm shift in funding”, since a “fundamental change in the policy field in a quantitative and qualitative manner has taken place”. Accordingly, cohesion policy is developing more and more from a support policy for the economically weakest regions and states to a comprehensive instrument of economic policy and is thus transforming it into a European “substitute economic policy”.

Switzerland's contribution to cohesion

The Swiss Confederation (Confederation) uses the term cohesion contribution in connection with enlargement contributions to new EU states. Such a contribution was paid for the first time after German reunification . Since then, this practice has been repeated several times during EU enlargements , as there were also advantages for Switzerland.

In a new round (2006) it was envisaged that Switzerland would make a cohesion contribution independently and in the form of specific projects in the ten new EU states. The corresponding Osthilfegesetz was approved in the referendum on November 26, 2006.

Switzerland thus entered into project commitments totaling CHF 1 billion for a period of ten years. In contrast to previous years, however, there is increasing resistance to this approach, as new demands are made by new or future EU members.

At the beginning of February 2007, the EU asked Switzerland to make further payments for the two new states.

See also

literature

  • Julian Dörr: The European Cohesion Policy. An economic perspective , Berlin, 2017.
  • Desmond Dinan: Ever Closer Union. An Introduction to European Integration , 4th ed., London, 2010.
  • Markus Neufeld: Cohesion in times of crisis? Convergence and resilience in European spatial development . Dissertation, Erlangen, 2017.
  • Kolja Rudzio : Functional change in cohesion policy under the influence of the European Parliament . Volume 30 of the series of publications of the Europa-Kolleg Hamburg on integration research, Baden-Baden, 2000.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Desmond Dinan: Ever Closer Union. An Introduction to European Integration . 4th edition. Palgrave Macmillan, London 2010.
  2. ^ A b Julian Dörr: The European Cohesion Policy. An economic perspective . De Gruyter, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-11-048012-2 , pp. 214 .