[From the Introduction]. The Single European Act has affirmed the reduction of regional economic disparities as a necessary step to achieve the social and political cohesion of the community as a whole. To better understand the problem of regional disparities, the Commission has been actively studying the situation for the past decade in the publication 'The periodic reports of the social and economic situations of the regions of the Community'....My goal is to identify those regions that have experienced a steady trend of improvement or decline relative to the other European regions. A comparison between strong and weak, especially if the regions in these groups remain fairly constant over time, lends itself only to a tautological explanation of the differences between the two groups. Conversely, recognizing the regions experiencing real change in living standards and relative ranks, allow us to ask what are they doing that supports these changes. I will hypothesize that these movements can only be explained by examining the social and political situations in the regions
