EPRC's 25th Anniversary Meeting of the EoRPA Regional Policy Research Consortium

The 25th annual meeting of the European Policies Research Centre's EoRPA Research Consortium took place at Strathclyde University's country house, Ross Priory, from 3 to 5 October 2004. The Consortium consists of regional policy departments and agencies from ten European countries which provide funding for comparative research into regional policy developments in Europe undertaken by EPRC. The annual meeting was attended by more than twenty senior regional policymakers from Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom (in many cases, involving the Director of Regional Policy from the country concerned). The meeting, which was facilitated by simultaneous translation into English, French, German and Italian, discussed papers produced and presented by EPRC staff. The key areas for discussion concerned recent developments in regional policy across the EU (paper presented by Douglas Yuill, Martin Ferry and Irene McMaster); the impact of EU control of regional aid on national regional policy (Fiona Wishlade); the future of EU cohesion policy (John Bachtler and Fiona Wishlade); and the evaluation of regional policy (Laura Polverari and John Bachtler).