Successes & Failures in EU Cohesion Policy: An Introduction to EU cohesion policy in Eastern, Central, and Southern Europe

Regions in the EU’s Eastern and Southern peripheries tend to perform badly across many rankings from economic development, to quality of government, social justice and innovation potential, despite the fact that the vast majority of EU structural funding has been spent in these countries. However, these countries followed different development trajectories and reacted differently to the economic crisis. Some of them still struggle, others thrive, others, after years of structural transformation,