Brussels’ single plan risks handing cohesion policy back to national capitals

The future of EU cohesion policy after 2027 is “very uncertain,” says Gianfranco Viesti, professor of applied economics at the University of Bari and one of Italy’s leading specialists on territorial cohesion. The Union, he argues, is absorbed by “three great priorities that do not correspond to cohesion”: competitiveness, future enlargements, and rearmament and defence.

Those priorities, Viesti says, are already visible in the Commission’s budget proposal of July 2025, which “puts cohesion policy very much in the background” while trying to “pursue the same objectives with the same resources.” The proposal asks neither for higher national contributions nor for new common borrowing. That, he warns, is “a great risk.” Cohesion policy is “fundamental,” and its absence “risks undermining cohesion among citizens inside Europe, with political repercussions that could be very worrying.”

Reform itself is not the problem. Cohesion has always been “a necessarily multi-level policy,” involving European, national, regional and local government, and its functioning “is not optimal.” In Italy, Viesti adds, “policies have become too regionalised, too much in the hands of the various regional executives.” Every attempt at improvement is therefore welcome.

The Commission’s proposed “single plan” is another matter. It would become “a single container that also includes agricultural policies,” he says, and “there are no longer the European rules for dividing resources among regions at different levels of development.”

Viesti draws a direct lesson from NextGenerationEU, which he studied closely. “The programming of policies and their implementation was highly centralised on national executives,” with “little attention to local differentiation” and “little attention to different territorial needs,” plus “short-term political needs.” Italy’s recovery plan “was modified seven times” and is now “completely different from the original one.” His conclusion is blunt: “Moving from an excess of regionalisation to an absolute excess of renationalisation is not the right course.”

Asked whether new conditions could turn cohesion into a political lever, Viesti says yes. He points to “a continuous iron embrace between the European Commission and national governments” that dates back to the Stability Pact. Those pressures, he warns, are “entirely independent of what is done and who performs their roles inside cohesion policy,” and they risk introducing “conditions or pressures wholly independent of the objectives and instruments of the policy itself.”

That is different, he stresses, from cohesion’s older conditions, which he considers “very appropriate”: shared reforms with member states and regions on public procurement or the green transition, designed “as preparation or accompaniment.” “In this case,” he says, “we are dealing with something very different, and the policy has very different objectives too.”

The argument is “very lively” in the European Parliament, especially in the REGI committee, where political groups “are putting pressure on the Commission to make changes.” Inside member states, by contrast, “the discussion is very modest.” Capitals “have not grasped the scale of the great change underway.”

Italy is a case in point. “My impression is that the Italian government is doing less than one would expect,” Viesti says, given “the crucial importance of cohesion in our case” and a possible “conflict of interest between the world of cohesion and the world of agriculture.” The politics are awkward too: “The Commission vice-president in charge of cohesion policy belongs to the same party as the current Italian prime minister, and that makes everything more difficult.” 2027 is also “an election year in Italy, and this issue risks being pushed into the background.”

The two constituencies are not equally armed. “The world of agriculture has historically been very able to defend its positions, very well organised and very capable of putting pressure on politics.” Cohesion is “very fragmented, because the beneficiaries are ultimately all citizens,” and it is “the victim of a narrative as a subsidy instrument,” focused on “the waste of cohesion” rather than results.

Italian parties compound the weakness. Many “voted for the Commission,” Viesti notes, and therefore fight “a little harder in the Parliament and committees in Brussels” than “in public squares and among citizens.” That is not mainly a problem for the beneficiaries, he says, but “for Europe.” “If Europe leaves the hearts of Europeans, citizens will look elsewhere for their political representation,” and “what we are seeing across Europe is that they turn mainly to anti-European forces.”

Enlargement needs the same territorial caution. The 2004 round “had a very profound impact, and in particular a very negative impact on southern Europe.” That “does not mean at all that a new enlargement should not happen,” Viesti says, “but it must be prepared well,” with measures for the weaker populations and territories of the EU-27 and “a great deal of care.”

Competitiveness poses a similar trap. “If you completely detach it from territories, you are taking a very strong step toward a further polarisation of economic activity.” The danger, as he puts it, is that “with one weakened hand you try to help cohesion, but with the other you put it at risk.”

The article in Italian by EUalive’s partner FocusEurope.it can be found here.

Caption: Gianfranco Viesti, professor of applied economics at the University of Bari [FocusEurope.it]