The Impact of the EU Regional Policy on Political Development of Spain

The regional policy of the European Union has had a significant impact on all the dimensions of development of Spain. One of the most considerable consequences of this external factor may become contribution to centrifugal rather than to centripetal forces. The regional programs of the EU are one of the many reasons for drives away from the center. This factor has played a role in virtually all such conflicts (the less developed and more developed parts of a country each feeling exploited by the other and hence liberated). However, it is by far not the only one: ethnic and/or linguistic and/or religious and/or cultural differences play a role as much as historical memories such as past independence. Hence the problem is how EU regional policy in its various guises impacts on these factors and that turns to causal mechanisms. The EU regional policy has a number of aims such as, e.g., competitiveness (for the more developed parts of the country) or convergence (for the less developed) and overall wants to create a sense of Europe united. It does not specifically aim at alleviating grievances within member states, but can certainly be instrumentalized in such a way by central governments to counter secessionist moods. However, these are indirect effects and it requires a careful study of cases to identify causal effects along the lines of the argument (for the simple reasons that there can be many reasons for the ebb and flow of such moods). The problem of the EU regional policy influence on development of different regions of the EU member states has received a great deal of attention. In particular, there is an exhaustive strand of literature on the EU regional policy impact on the economic development of regions (Crescenzi, Giua, 2017, 2018; Medeiros, 2017; Adan, 2015). In recent years, the contribution was made about the positions of regional governments to the European integration process after targeted measures of the EU regional policy (Gross, Debus, 2018; Dotti, 2016). In particular, questions were raised about how lobbying activities of regional parties are manifested at the level of the European Union. Increased research on this topic has still left several important questions unanswered. There have been a limited amount of studies challenging the issue whether the EU regional policy contribute to centrifugal rather than to centripetal forces. It remains largely unclear what factors and for what reasons lead to the calls for "decentralization". This study aims to redress the gap in the literature by investigating how the EU regional policy contributes to centrifugal rather than to centripetal forces in Spain. The purpose of this research is twofold. The first motivation is to explore whether the EU regional policy in its various guises impacts on regions of Spain (ethnic and/or linguistic and/or religious and/or cultural differences) and that turns to causal mechanisms with the use of Qualitative Comparative Analysis method. The second one is to define in greater detail the impact of the EU regional policy on regional political actors in Spain.