European ´Peripheries´: Old and Mew Challenges and Possible Actions

The centre-periphery approach has generated large literature that we can now consider overcome. It was generally focused on accessibility problems and its economic consequences. However, this paper doesn´t follow a conventional approach. Although it considers transport and accessibility problems as core concerns, there are other crucial factors that characterize the ´peripherality´. These factors involve innovation capacity, research and development expenses and human capital investments at regional level, among other. After some starting general considerations, this paper focuses on the empirical analysis where we evaluate the behaviour of central, peripheral and intermediate regions of a EU-15 sample. The results show big differences among these regions but also quite heterogeneity within these three groups. From our analysis we extract some conclusions and relate them to actual challenges all the regions face but more severely the peripheral. The paper closes with a few final remarks and some considerations on possible actions and the need for cooperation both between regions and on a European scale.