EPRC had a significant presence at the Conference 'What Future for Cohesion Policy? An Academic and Policy Debate', held in Bled (Slovenia) on 16-18 March 2011.
In his capacity as Board Member of the Regional Studies Association (RSA), Professor John Bachtler was a co-organiser of this new initiative by the RSA to promote dialogue and knowledge exchange between the academic and policy communities. A further EPRC contribution was made by Laura Polverari, as workshop chair, round table panellist and speaker.
Organised jointly between the RSA, the European Commission (DG Regio) and the Slovenian Government, the purpose of the Conference was discuss the contribution of academic research to the contemporary policymaker agenda in the field of Cohesion policy.
The Conference brought together over 100 academic researchers from across Europe, as well as Commission and national officials, to discuss issues such as the relationship between Europe 2020 and Cohesion policy, territorial cohesion, the role of macro-regions and territorial cooperation, and the effectiveness, additionality, implementation and evaluation of Cohesion policy.
Drawing on her PhD research and on research undertaken for the IQ-Net network, Laura Polverari presented a paper 'The Effectiveness of Cohesion Policy Implementation: Conflicting Accountabilities and Accountability/Efficiency Trade-Offs'. She also chaired a workshop on the monitoring and evaluation of Cohesion policy and was a panellist in a round table on the effectiveness of Cohesion policy.
John Bachtler chaired the final plenary session of the Conference on the subject of 'The Future of Cohesion Policy: Research Agendas' as well as a workshop on partnership and cooperation in the implementation of Cohesion policy.
Further details on the Conference are available here.