Does Cohesion Policy help to combat intra-country regional disparities? A perspective on Central European countries

This paper analyses the effect of the macroeconomic efficiency of Cohesion Policy on within-country economic cohesion as reflected by various measures of sigma convergence by applying macroeconomic HERMIN models for the Czech, Polish and Slovak regions. The results reveal that from 2021 to 2027, Cohesion Policy will have a relatively small impact on within-country convergence. More importantly, Cohesion Policy seems to be doomed to fail in terms of reducing within-country disparities in the long run; that is, the structural differences among regional economies effectively prevent European Union support from narrowing the development gap between regions.

Automated summary

This paper analyzes the impact of the macroeconomic efficiency of Cohesion Policy on within-country economic cohesion. The results indicate that the impact of Cohesion Policy is relatively small and ineffective in reducing regional development disparities in the long run.