SESSION DETAILSEuropean Regional Policy- in between policy innovation and politics modernization The European Regional Policy has been one of the most aggressive policies to of the European Union in reshaping national and regional institutions in order to meet organizational performance to mange funds absorption and to project sustainable development. Bouncing in between the old approach of administrative endeavors and the new public management, the local public administration, particularly in the new European Union Members States, has found itself more often in disarray rather than following a new path of organizational reformation. The institutional geography designed by the European Regional Policy has been even further complicated with the call of social actors to embark on the constructing local, regional and national frameworks and paths that funds need to flow for and through. In most countries, the European Regional Policy brought in a new paradigm of development that triggered institutional and territorial redesign; hence it opened the vicious circle of state control in terms of development policies. Even more confusing at large for most of the proponents or contesters, mixing principles of liberal democracy, development rationale and inflaming a blurring effect on national constitutions, the European Regional Policy has been looked upon as the emancipation of the local level and modernisation of the state, quite seldom building up a reasoning theory based on the democratic values as minority rights, self-determinacy, local autonomy and economic efficiency embedded in the reform of administration and policy innovation Even though rather inconsistent and less "in one voice" in the public fora but with firm individual taken from inside, the signals from Brussels have proved to look at the region both as the locus for production and for consolidating democracy, aiming at working out economic social disparities, get an effective public administration ready to handle properly Community funds, but not the least good governance. GUIDING QUESTION To what extent the EU Regional Policy managed to reshape domestic politics and institutional change in the new Members States on their accession way to the European Union? How feasible would be to work on an Open Method of Coordination applying in the case of the European Regional Policy? What are the gain and loses of the re-nationalization of the European Regional Policy? |