EPRC ran a successful specialist conference on Area Designation and Regional Policy at the Stirling Highland Hotel on 23-25 January.
The conference was attended by sixteen senior policymakers from ten Member States, with backgrounds in regional policy, State aid and European statistics. The conference was the final stage of an ESRC-funded research project entitled Area Designation and Regional Policy: Lessons for Policy Transfer, which is due to be completed in the next few months. The project, which is part of the ESRC Future Governance Programme (Lessons from Comparative Public Policy), is led by Fiona Wishlade and Douglas Yuill.
Other EPRC attendees at the conference were Francois Josserand, Laura Polverari and Jacqui Vance.
The conference, which was chaired by Douglas Yuill, began with an overview presentation by Fiona Wishlade on the rationale and development of the regional aid guidelines. This was followed by presentations on the technical and statistical issues associated with designating aid areas under the guidelines; on the procedural and institutional issues arising from negotiating the maps with the Commission; and on the relevance and coherence of the results.
These presentations were made by invited specialists from Italy, the UK, Germany, France and Sweden, as well as Douglas Yuill. Having reviewed Member State experiences with the 1998-2000 area designations, the conference moved on to consider future prospects, not least in the context of an enlarged EU. A presentation by Fiona Wishlade on area designation and enlargement was followed by an open discussion on the future of the regional aid guidelines.
As noted, the conference was the final stage of an ESRC research project which should result in the publication of a book on this theme later this year.