On 15th of May I had the opportunity to interview Philip McCann, Professor of Economic Geography at University of Groningen and special adviser to Johannes Hahn, European Commissioner for Regional Policy after participating in the Workshop “Assessing EU Cohesion Policy” organized by Bruegel. This event was organised in two sessions. One was institutional and looked at the new performance-oriented EU cohesion policy, its rationale and previous experiences with impact assessment. The other one aimed to assess the growth effects of EU cohesion policy with an eye at the different methodologies that have been used to measure them.
The interviewee outlines the differences between the current and the next EU financial perspective with regards to EU cohesion policy and explains what are the main challenges for European institutions in keeping a balance between growth and solidarity while implementing cohesion policy.
