Regional policy, convergence and subsidiarity in the European Community

The aim of this paper is to shed light on how real income has developed across the member states and regions of the EC and to consider what demands this will place on regional policy. According to the principle of subsidiarity, a necessary, though not a sufficient, condition for EC intervention would be to prove that the scale of regional problems is too great to be handled by member states. Using two concepts of convergence, it can be shown that income convergence across the member states and even across the regions of the EC is the norm. Based on the principle of subsidiarity, policy implications concerning the assignment of a complementary function for redistributive regional policy to the EC tier are derived from the empirical evidence.

Regional policy, convergence and subsidiarity in the European Community

The aim of this paper is to shed light on how real income has developed across the member states and regions of the EC and to consider what demands this will place on regional policy. According to the principle of subsidiarity, a necessary, though not a sufficient, condition for EC intervention would be to prove that the scale of regional problems is too great to be handled by member states. Using two concepts of convergence, it can be shown that income convergence across the member states and even across the regions of the EC is the norm. Based on the principle of subsidiarity, policy implications concerning the assignment of a complementary function for redistributive regional policy to the EC tier are derived from the empirical evidence

Environmental legislation and the impact of lobbying activities

The paper is concerned with effects of lobbying activities by political pressure groups that wish to affect environmental legislation. Two interest groups are considered, environmentalists on the one hand and a polluters' lobby on the other. These two groups can influence the environmental policy in two ways. First, they support those political parties that promise to implement their favoured kind of environmental regulation. This support has an impact on election probabilities and, therefore, on the environmental policy measures implemented by the new government. The second way of influencing political decisions is to exert pressure on an existing government. These two approaches are used in the paper to address the questions of how environmental quality is affected by lobbying activities and how large the resource waste due to lobbying is