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Abstract:
This paper studies the European Cohesion Policy Programmes in the New EU Member States. We find that the allocation of the EU funds among different uses is very uneven among the EU NMS. To some extent this is the consequence of the “capping rule” that has imposed limits on the annual transfers to the NMS and has distorted the allocation of the EU funds towards the key priority which became development and transport infrastructure, in particular. The politically motivated shift proposed by the European Commission in the Cohesion Policy to spend away from transport infrastructure and towards innovation and human capital development, in accordance with the goals of the strategy Europe 2020 approved in March 2010 that will definitely benefit the old EU-15, may become an obstacle to the development of the NMS in the long run.
