Great goals of integration and development aside, why should Bavaria bother about the performance of Sicily? We return to the old-debated efficiency of the Cohesion Policy funds distributed among European regions. The paradox of repeated cycles of investment with slow (or absent) convergence levels and still persistent disparities are accompanied from our point of view with a failure of coordination. Why cohesion did not achieve completely its primary goals and why still wide gaps exist among the beneficiaries, was answered partially by scholars and experts on cases like Italy or Spain, not however on a complete picture. From 2014 onwards we know with certainty that CP will be dramatically restructured, however, the nutshell of the problem is the existent mechanism to implement virtuous policies that did not function in all regions. In the current model we detect an asymmetry of information which negatively affects the feasibility of projects. We design, based on a game theoretical setting a model which intends to explore the scarce bounding ties of coordination as reasons of these failures. We prospect that previously negotiated contracts with explicit limits and conditions of accomplishment for each target objective would enhance the capacity to bound actors in efficiently implementing programs and coordinate on upper levels with peer regions. The contract, which corresponds to a minimum set of requirements of the regions in each objective, virtually functions as a club. Since regions seek to benefit from funds it would be in their interest to conform to the “rules of the club”. At this point, coordination endogenously arises and fosters the exchange of knowledge (know-how) among regions.
