Centre-Periphery conflict in the European Union? Europe 2020, the Southern European Model and the euro-crisis
Centre-Periphery conflict in the European Union? Europe 2020, the Southern European Model and the euro-crisis

Author(s): José Maria Magone
Subject(s): Business Economy / Management, Economic policy, Government/Political systems, International relations/trade
Published by: Kossuth Kiadó Zt.
Summary/Abstract: This paper intends to address the growing diversity and heterogeneity of the European Union in the terms of socioeconomic governance. From the very start, the South European enlargement of the 1980s – Portugal, Spain and Greece – was characterised by considerable amounts of the financial transfers in terms of structural funds, paid mainly by net payer countries to these lagging behind economies and social systems. Meanwhile such transfers have been happening for the past 26 years, however, the results in terms of socioeconomic structural change have been so far modest. The recent finance crisis has shown that instead of convergence, a structural socioeconomic gap still persists between the southern regions and the EU average. Moreover, the structural funds contributed to a modernization of infrastructures, nevertheless failed to achieve a restructuring of the economy from a labour intensive to an upgraded high technology one.

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