A retrospective assessment of the implementation of EU regional policy in the EU-15 Member States has been published by John Bachtler as part of a book on the readiness of the Candidate Countries for EU regional policy.
Examining the experiences of Structural Fund implementation, the book chapter reviews the evolution of programming over successive time periods and assesses the added value of the Funds from different perspectives. The book is based on a conference held in Bratislava in November 2003 and is published by the Slovak Foreign Policy organisation. For further details see, "Readiness of the Candidate Countries for the EU Regional Policy", edited by Vladimir Ben, 2004, .