PERCEIVE project - Deliverable D4.5 "Report on the comparative analysis of experts' and citizens' perceptions and views"

This report is a comparative analysis of nine regional case-studies selected in our project, based on original data collected through the PERCEIVE field survey that was conducted during the summer of 2017 and on the reports on regional case studies written by Perceive’s partners. Each report was based on the analysis of the focus group’s section that addresses the assessment of Cohesion Policy. The general objective of this report is to synthesize the citizens’ and practicioners’ views on EU Cohesion Policy and to compare them in order to understand if there are different perceptions of this policy and its implementation. For each region included in the study, the identification of the relevant regional needs are considered, followed by an assessment of the EU policy effectiveness in responding to the revealed issues. Both have been pursued at the level of citizens and of Cohesion Policy practitioners, and are followed by a comparative analysis that helps to understand whether the EU Cohesion Policy is perceived and understood by citizens in the same way as it has been conceived by practitioners. The comparative analysis helped shed light on the convergence and divergence points between citizens and experts with regard to the public intervention needs through Cohesion Policy and in the evaluation of the effectiveness of these interventions, thus contributing to a better understanding of the general perception of the EU by the large public

Competitiveness and innovation in rural Romania

In the recent period, public actions and policies have been increasingly oriented towards the improvement of economic competitiveness on account of numerous studies that signal the problems generated by the loss of performance from this perspective. This study attempts to identify the main factors that make the regional economies in Romania vulnerable in the face of competitors, mainly for the regions with strong and medium rurality features, i.e. the Predominantly rural (PR) counties and the Intermediate counties – classified according to the OECD methodology. The results of the study showed that the factors that largely contribute to widening the regional disparities with regard to rural competitiveness, making the PR counties more vulnerable are the following: (i) access to innovation and (2) the value of exports, in both the non-agricultural and agrifood economy

Citizens’ vs practitioners’ perception on the EU regional approach

This paper targets to juxtapose the points of view of citizens, as be-neficiaries of the European programmes – on the one hand, and of practitio-ners – as designers and experts in charge of implementing the Cohesion Policy programmes – on the other. The study was conducted at the level of a sample consisting of 9 NUTS II regions of the European Union, which were selected to be representative for the com-plex and heterogeneous reality of the EU Cohesion Policy. The analysis of data collected from the case study regions demonstrated that, regardless of the status of the regions (competitiveness or convergence regions), there are overlaps as regards points of view of the two categories of regional actors only for a part of regional priorities. At the same time, the study revealed that the citizens’ trust in the effectiveness of the EU in targeting regional issues is higher in the case of those regional needs that are on the agenda of both categories of regional actors and it drops for those regional issues for which perceptive divergences exist between citizens and practitioners