Cohesion and diversification in modern Europe

Abstract

Even from the beginning of Gyula Horváth’s research career, European regional processes and policies played a central role for him. With this study, the authors salute his memory.

This paper studies the continent’s most important geographic, economic, social and political dimensions, and its changing territorial structure after World War II. It describes the social-spatial structure’s permanent and variable elements and the changes in regional development inequalities on different territorial levels. Furthermore, it analyzes in detail the geographic dimensions determining macro-regional divisions and the factors producing differentiations along the cardinal directions and center-periphery relations. The paper cites generalized graphical spatial structure models of the continent which are often used in scientific and political papers to illustrate and highlight spatial differences.

The paper looks through the in-country territorial levels and spatial subdivisions, the differences between the roles of the regional units, and the changes of spatial differentiation. Besides presenting the main periods, objectives and tools of EU regional policy, it also analyzes the financial transfers within the Community during the 2004–2014 period. We think that in some countries the social and political evaluation of this theme is too much one-sided. Furthermore, in many cases, other important parts of social management (e.g. the idea and the institutions of territorial decentralization) or the evaluation of the market’s determining role and territorial effects took a back seat. As these mechanisms’ combined effects, there is a negative correlation between the countries’ development level and their degree of inter-regional development inequality. In the more developed central countries the regional inequalities are lower than in the peripheral ones, and in most of the latter countries, the dominant trend is an increase of territorial (and social) differentiations.

This paper disputes the newly modified European and Hungarian regional policies’ onesided focus on cities because it threatens its another often cited objective of territorial cohesion. The study highlights the importance of the continent’s global and the national legislation’s still dominant role in territorial governance. According to the paper, the changing role of the borders is a significant problem area in the continent's modern history and actual situation.