Supporting effective regional integration? What the 11th European Development Fund programming tells us

Regional integration is one of the cornerstones of EU’s development and international cooperation policy and it is likely to remain an important building block in EU's future foreign, development and security policies. However, if the EU wants to effectively support regional integration, it will need to adapt its ambitions to what is feasible, taking into account the structural factors and political dynamics driving and hindering regional integration. This should extend beyond the simple twin explanations of “lack of political will” and capacity constraints.

Learning from the past was one of the key drivers behind EU’s new approach to supporting regional cooperation in the 11th European Development Fund. Although some of the innovations introduced can be seen as a potential "paradigm shift", they may not necessarily result in more and better regional integration, particularly if EU programming is not underpinned by a more sophisticated political understanding of the different regions, countries and sectors in which the EU intervenes. 

This Briefing Note presents the key findings of a larger study, published in the form of a Discussion Paper authored by Alisa Herrero and Cecilia Gregersen, which covers the issues in significantly more detail.