European Regional Differences · Global Voices
Tibor Blazko

Slovak NGO/think-tank Conservative Institute [en] blogged [sk] about the results of a study of 270 second-level EU regions (NUTS 2). Comparing changes in unemployment, they found that during 1990-2011, despite the growing amount of Euro-funds, the differences between the regions grew by about 4 percentage points. In more than 50 years of European integration, the EU institutions have created 112,140 regulations. Conservative Institute claims [sk] that the actual EU strategy is causing loss of competitiveness, higher debts, taxes and a lower level of employment:
[…] Instead of the futile struggle with regional differences, the EU should rather begin to focus on reducing the regulatory burden, which is the opposite of what is currently being done. The government's goal should not be the removal of regional or other differences, but the removal of regulations and barriers to business and everyday life […]. The consequences of the increased level of redistribution will prove negative in the long run […].
The EU's regional/cohesion policy as part of the European redistribution mechanism should be cancelled. The reforms, which are always heard about when the end of one of the programming periods is approaching […], are mostly just an attempt to put on new clothes on the old skeleton figurines. Stubborn construction of welfare state […] – this naive and irresponsible direction of the EU ignores the reality. The reality in which the EU member states are losing more and more jobs in a globalized economy, losing the competitiveness […]. The reality in which the indebted EU is courting the communist China about buying European debt.