Regional policy in the EU: A passing phase of Europeanisation or a complex case of policy transfer?

This paper investigates the Europeanisation of regional policy in the EU Member States. Much of the existing literature on Europeanisation tends to concentrate on one or two Member States and/or on one policy sector, is static in perspective and therefore prone to generalisations on the basis of narrow case studies. This study aims to address the weaknesses of such approaches by undertaking an historical analysis of the same activity (area designation for regional policy) within the context of two EU policy sectors (competition policy and regional policy) for all Member States.