The term cohesion policy refers to the European Union’s main objective about the investment policy that targets all the cities and regions in the EU for the business competitiveness, job creation, sustainable development and economic growth. The broader objective of the cohesion policy is to improve the quality of life of the citizens. By the end of 2020, it has been decided by EU that they are going to accomplish five more concrete objectives like innovation, social inclusion, climate or energy and education. The cohesive policy of the European Union was created with the objective of improving the nations prospective of the nations in achieving a more qualitative growth and encourage other nation to follow the footsteps. In this context, the aim of this paper is to evaluate whether the different countries under the European Union are contended with the provisions subsumed within the cohesive policy and in what ways the countries have derived benefits through the cohesive policy. To respond to this broader research question, the researcher engaged in an intensive review of literature pertaining to the different provisions of the cohesive policy and analysis of the trends in research pertaining to the cohesive policy. It has been found that there is a need to engage in a perusal of the scope, range and the benefits of the cohesion policy of the European Union and delve into this issue through the adoption of the positivist approach. Being a qualitative research, survey interviews, case studies and semi-structured questionnaires were deployed for this research. These were conducted online as the 250 respondents spanning across the five selected countries were located in a geographical distance. The analysis of data for this research took place on two levels. The findings and the limitations of the study would be discussed in the concluding section of this paper.
The paper aims to argue that the cohesion policy is a win-win situation for all the member countries of European Union. Some of the provisions of the cohesive policy of the EU (European Union) are benefits related o education, environment and the enhancement in the quality of life (Howorth 2014). The paper also tries to understand whether all the nations are satisfied by this policy. There have been a dearth of research to understand the ways in which cohesive policy of the European Union have been advantageous for all the member nations. The aim of this study is to understand the specific goals achieved through the cohesive policy that has been evident in the five selected nations namely Poland, Italy, France, Germany and United Kingdom. The reason behind selecting these five nations is to narrow down the research and focus on the impact on thee cohesive policy on these specific countries and from that gauge the success of the cohesive policy.
In the last 15 years, the cohesion policy of the European Union (EU) has become an intensively evaluated policy in the entire Europe. Since the onset of the reform in the Structural Funds in 1988, there have been successive phases for regulation that have led to the rigorous system of appraisal, supervision, monitoring and assessment of all the EU-funded regional development interventions (Pollack 2015). Scholars have argued that the increasing attention directed towards the evaluation and assessment of cohesion policy of the European Union needs to be contexualized with the broader spectrum in the boom in the evaluation of the policy and programme (McCann and Ortega-Argilés 2015). This encourages the researchers to reflect on the interventions of EU. It has been found that enormous amount of expenditure and the different contested decisions have propelled the European Union to become more accountable in their expenditure. This is further reflected in the more steady creation of the extensive EU evaluation regime. It has been reported that the evaluation of the cohesion policy fulfilled the objectives of many different organizations that includes the partners through national and regional government authorities of the different institutions of the European Union, all these institutions have different motivations and goals in context of the expenditure and also in the results of the European Union. Union namely the Commission, European Parliament and th European Court of auditors (Luukkonen and Moilanen 2012). According to the EU (European Union) Cohesion policy 2014-2020, the regional policy that is also known as the cohesion policy of the European Union has the objective of promoting economic prosperity and promotion of social cohesion in the entire territory of the Union, therefore there are 27 member states and there are 271 regions (Keukeleire and Delreux 2014). During the phase of 2007-2013 the main objectives of EU’s cohesion policy has been regional competitiveness and employment, convergence and European Territorial Cooperation. According to Hasan (2016) more than 80 per cent of the budget of the cohesion policy has been reserved for the poorest regions where the GDP per capita is less than 75 per cent of the average of European Union.
The money receive is used for boosting the economic growth that includes improving the transport facilities and managing other infrastructure projects. More than 100 regions have received funding on convergence objective that was known as Objective 1. These regions comprise of population around 170 million who are about one-third of the population of the European Union. These convergence nations are found in the new member states to the eastern and central of Europe. On the domain of regional competitiveness, around 16 per cent of the money is shared between 170 regions that are not subsumed under the convergence objective (Buonanno and Nugent 2013). In November 10 there was a future programmes for EU that was brought into the pace. Some of the features of this are raising the employment rate, improvement of access to education, investment of money into technology and research, usage of energy more efficiently for the reduction of pollution and promotion of clean technologies.
Through an intense review of pertinent literature it can be noted that the cohesive policy of European Union has been a win-win situation for the all the countries. Therefore the hypothesis of the study is
H1: Members of the EU nations are contended with the provisions of the cohesive policy of EU.
To examine the given hypothesis, this study will collect data from the population deploying the various qualitative research methodologies. Given this case, the researcher will be evaluating the relationship between dependant variables benefits of the cohesive policy of EU) and independent variable the cohesive policy of EU). I will select the explanatory research design. Through the measurement of the social, economic, environmental and educational growth of the member states, the study will able to understand the advantages generated through the new cohesive policy of the European Union. In Social science, there are a number of research philosophies that can be applied for the purpose of social science research-these are positivist approach, interpretivists approach and the post-structural approach (Halperin and Heath 2016). From the outset, the current study employs the positivist approach. This study further uses the positivist approach that is dependent on the chosen evidences like the statistical findings and the experimental results that identify the true nature of the society (Kaplan 2017). Positivism can be the most appropriate approach that can be adopted for any study by integrating investigation of the systems of the society and the trends. These trends and the systems include the political and the social structures that have been borrowed from the different parts of the world. The profounder of the positivist theory strived to come up with a study theory and approach that would facilitate scholars to understand and examine the ultimate goal for the improvement of the world in which one is residing. According to this theory, individuals, institutions and the government have tried to establish structures and systems that would lead to the promotion of a better world.
The study would deploy a survey research strategy that would enable in the collection of data about the practises, views and the situations through the techniques of interviews and semi-structured questionnaires. In the structured questionnaire, the researcher tries exert greater amount of control on the respondents compared to the unstructured and informal type of questionnaire. It has been found that qualitative studies deploy interviews whilst quantitative studies adopt the questionnaire method for eliciting data (Brinkmann 2014). Since this study adopts the qualitative paradigm, therefore this study will adopt survey interviews instead of the survey questionnaire to suit the temperament of the research. It has been found that the collection of data through the processes of interviews is one of the most effective approach that enable the researcher to answer the questions and address the highlighted research problems (Hughes and Sharrock 2016). The success of the research is contingent on the methods adopted by the researcher in the collection of data. The study would deploy the positivism philosophy, survey interviews and case studies as they key strategies for research. The motivation behind the adoption of survey interviews is to remove the analytical errors that emerge in the pursuit of research. Survey interviews are considered the best in the collection of primary data especially regarding the various members in these five selected countries and the benefits they have incurred through the cohesion policy of European Union (Newman 2014). Apart from this, the deployment of direct observation methods that would enable the researcher to analyze the different situations that arise in the society and the selected case studies of these five countries based on the provisions of the cohesive policy. Then there is the method of observation in research. This enables the researcher to derive first-hand experience on the reality under investigation. The intensive review of the pertinent literature enables the researcher to muster the right kind of information regarding the motivation behind the cohesive policy of the European Union.
It has been noted that the selection of the sample population is considered as one of the most important steps for the success of the qualitative study. It is important for the researcher to select the sample population from the research population to whom the appropriate questions will be asked. For this purpose, the researcher would select the sample population of total respondents from five countries (France, Britain, Poland, Germany and Italy).50 respondents will be selected from each of these countries with the aim to achieve a balanced data collection system. The participants will be contacted via online. The primary reason behind online survey interview is the feasibility factor and making generous use of the benefits’ of digitization. The sample population of this study will comprise both men and women above the age of 18. Data will be collected from the sample population based on the main research variables that would include the social, political and economic backgrounds like the region of the respondents, gender and age. Non-probability sampling will be used for the purpose of the study and the simple random sampling (SRS) will be used for the study (Rooney et al. 2016).
There are different kinds of data analysis techniques, for this study the content analysis technique will be used. The motivation behind using the content analysis technique is to study the phenomenon and what it means in the political and social worlds. The term content analysis refers to the procedure used for the categorization of the behavioural data to classify, provide a synopsis and tabulate the findings of the study (Ritzer and Stepnisky 2017). The analysis of the data will be achieved through two main levels-In the first level data would be described in a manner that the researcher is able to evaluate what was said without the application of the comments of the theories. In the second and the higher level, the researcher would engage in a more interpretive analysis that would be concerned with the response or something that has been connoted in the entire process. Therefore, the data analysis pertaining to content analysis is to highlight the features and the importance of the application
The term reliability and validity of the study are interrelated. It refers to the ability of answer each of the research questions. Reliability of data is a scale of measurement in which the reliable data of the research is secured (Podsakoff, MacKenzie and Podsakoff 2012). The researcher adopts the number a series off numbers to ensure reliability of research. For example, in this study the Chronbranch’s Alpha scale would be deployed to gauge the reliability of the study. It is important for the researcher to make sure that the scale is within the standards of 0.7 to 0.8. In case of the validity of the research, the researcher would gauge the validity of the study through the deployment of pilot tests, statistical analysis tools and concurrent valid.
This study is committed in answering the research question in an effective manner as possible. Apart from the findings of the data that will emerge through the primary data, the secondary data analysis part of the research would be committed in understanding the response of the way in which the research question would be answered. Based on the data collected, the study will find that the EU cohesion policy have been beneficial in contributing to the technological development and promotion of innovation. These have led to the strengthening of the endeavour of research. Secondly, it has led to the increase in access of the use and quality of information for the communication technologies. Thirdly, it was found that there has been a shift towards the low-carbon economy by these countries. Fourthly, it was found that these countries have adapted to the principle of the climate change adaptation, prevention of the risk and the management. Some of the other findings in this direction are the prevention and protection of the environment and adoption of measures that promote the efficiency in use and preservation of the resources. Another finding related to this has been the promotion of sustainable transport and the improvement of the infrastructure of network. The study also found that there are potential beneficiaries of the cohesion policy of EU like associations, NGOs, voluntary organizations and the public body enterprises mainly the SMEs. Cohesion policy fostered the different member states of EU to coordinate and work as a team through projects, programmes and networks that have concrete impact on the each and every aspect of the economic life. This includes accessibility, business, education, innovation, environmental benefits or increase in employment. It was found that the international cooperation can take place through the macro-regional strategy that is understood tto be an integrated framework that is concerned with the some of the challenge encountered by the member states and the third countries known as the geographical areas.
Every research is faced with a series of limitations and issues that have the tendency to affect the course of the data collection analysis of the data and the future usage of the data. In every research, there are certain ethical issues that emerge in the pursuit of everyday research. The fist limitation of the study would be sampling. In the sampling process as wells as during the stage of analysis of data not much attention was paid to the context of gender and age. Deeper examination of these two variables would have led to more sophisticated and astute understanding of the phenomenon. The second limitation related to sampling is that respondents were chosen from only five EU countries were selected therefore, inivisibilizing the viewpoints of other EU countries regarding the benefits incurred through the cohesive policy. Another limitation of the research would be that more respondents from each of these five countries could have interviewed for the research to gain a more holistic overview of the situation. The scope of the research would be to study the given problem with the interpretivist approach as well as the post-structuralist approach to discern whether the adoption of different approach have any impact on understanding the present study.
Conclusion
Based on the intensive review of literature (secondary data analysis) and the data collected through survey interviews, survey questionnaires and case studies it can be concluded that the cohesion policy of European have indeed been beneficial for the member nations. Therefore, the hypothesis with which the study began have been proved to be true thus making it both valid and reliable. The respondents belonging to the five selected countries felt that there has been in the economic, technological and environmental aspects of their country that may be contributed to the provisions of the cohesive policy. The limitation of this study is that there could have been more respondents from the other countries to develop a holistic view. Secondly, there could have more emphasis on the variables of age and gender in this study.
References
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