The paper presents a critical assessment of EU Cohesion Policy's rationale and specific features through the lenses of theories loosely referred to as "new industrial policy". Theoretical work in this areas is important in order to clarify the role of Cohesion Policy in the context of the...

The paper investigates cohesion policy programmes' ability to define accurate policy outputs, in the form of targets. More specifically, the analysis explores the extent to which targets set by ERDF programmes to assess their performance are revised over time and seeks to identify specific...

Using data from the execution of 2014-2020 cohesion policy, the paper offers a comprehensive analysis of the speed of absorption capacity of European funds by introducing novel metrics. It evaluates absorption capacity considering time performance and distinguishing between national and regional...

This paper explores avenues for cross-fertilisation between the mission-oriented approach and Cohesion Policy. It argues in favour of mutual policy learning between the two to address some of their respective shortcomings: Cohesion Policy is facing a gradual erosion of its identity, whereas the...