'So Similar, so Different, so European'. Comparing EU Cohesion Policy in Italy and in Spain

After the 1988 reform of the structural funds, five multi-annual programming periods have been launched by the European Union. In these decades, several changes have been made to this policy, in terms of priorities, beneficiary states and rules of the game. Among those states that had the possibility to take advantage of the structural funds from the first programming period in 1989, both Italy and Spain presented a substantial number of underdeveloped regions. Nevertheless, while all Spanish regions (except Extremadura) have been able, programming after programming, to come out from the Objective 1 area, the quasi totality of the Mezzogiorno continues to be collocated among the less developed European regions. The aim of this paper is to explain the reasons for the different outcomes in the use of the structural funds, from the first to the actual programming period, in these two regionalized states. Attention will be paid on the strategies elaborated by Italian and Spanish policy makers, looking also at the Europeanisation of the national institutions in the two states and the different way in which European cohesion has been interpreted by national and sub-national actors. Adopting an hirschmanian matrix, the paper argues that the different performances in Italy and in Spain could be attributed to the presence in the latter of a sort of “national decision maker for the development” that has been able to plan the use of the funds, both giving priority to specific development projects and clearly attributing all the competencies among the levels of government.