This chapter outlines why EU Cohesion Policy must end and explores reform challenges. Despite consuming a third of the EU budget, structural funds have failed to reduce disparities, creating a resource curse that fosters dependency, misallocation, and reform delays. Conditionality mechanisms are ineffective: national governments promise reforms that rarely materialize, while the European Commission prioritizes absorption over accountability. Monitoring remains weak, and political incentives favour short-term spending and pork-barrel projects. The chapter argues that subsidies deny lagging regions the chance to learn from poor choices, perpetuating stagnation. Ending Cohesion Policy is essential, but politically difficult due to entrenched interests and lobbying. Gradual phase-out may be more feasible than abrupt termination, though both face commitment challenges. Freed resources should fund competitive programmes in research, innovation, and defence or return to citizens via tax cuts. The EU must abandon idealistic redistribution and focus on enforcing the Single Market, improving governance, and fostering competitiveness. Without reform, Cohesion Policy will continue to undermine Europe’s economic resilience and democratic integrity, threatening the EU’s future.

This chapter traces the origins and evolution of EU Cohesion Policy, a project born from the utopian vision of eliminating regional disparities across Europe. Initially absent from the Treaty of Rome, cohesion emerged gradually through political bargaining, notably during enlargements and the creation of the Single Market. Structural and investment funds – such as the European Regional Development Fund, Cohesion Fund, and European Social Fund Plus – became central instruments, eventually consuming about one-third of the EU budget. Their stated aim has been convergence, with transfers heavily concentrated in regions below 75 per cent of EU average income. Over time, Cohesion Policy expanded dramatically, reinforced by successive treaties and reforms, and complemented by instruments like the Recovery and Resilience Facility. Yet, despite unprecedented scale – far exceeding the Marshall Plan – the policy lacks a coherent economic theory or even a precise definition of ‘cohesion’. Its persistence reflects political expediency: richer states fund poorer ones to secure integration, while poorer states lobby for continued support. This chapter argues that Cohesion Policy is less an economic strategy than a political bargain.

This chapter argues that EU Cohesion Policy – through its structural and investment funds – has failed to achieve its core objective of regional convergence and has instead produced harmful economic and political consequences. Despite consuming roughly one-third of the EU budget and enjoying strong political support, these funds have not reduced disparities; in fact, some regions and entire countries, such as Portugal and Greece, have diverged from the EU average. I contend that cohesion funds operate as a form of resource curse: they distort incentives, foster dependency, and delay structural reforms, ultimately weakening competitiveness and governance. While the European Commission claims high returns on investment, credible evidence is scarce, and monitoring remains inadequate. Drawing on historical analogies and case studies, I show that these subsidies misallocate resources and undermine institutional quality, contributing to Europe’s stagnation relative to global competitors. Ending Cohesion Policy – while preserving beneficial aspects of EU integration – is essential for revitalizing the Union. This chapter sets out the intellectual foundation for that reform, challenging entrenched assumptions and calling for a serious debate on the future of EU regional policy.

This chapter argues that EU Cohesion Policy has created a resource curse within Europe, fostering dependency, misallocation, and institutional decay in several Member States. Despite decades of structural funds – amounting to hundreds of billions – countries like Greece, Portugal, and southern Italy have failed to converge and, in fact, diverged from EU averages. The chapter explains how continuous inflows of ‘easy money’ distort incentives, delay reforms, and weaken democratic accountability, while official EU reports rely on implausible models and confuse spending with outcomes. Economic mechanisms such as Dutch Disease inflate non-tradable sectors like construction, while political effects include rent-seeking, clientelism, and executive dominance over parliaments. Funds often substitute for national spending, finance short-term projects, and encourage pork-barrel investments, rather than fostering innovation or competitiveness. Although some Central and Eastern European countries have converged, warning signs suggest similar risks ahead. Cohesion Policy, intended as solidarity, has become a poison pill: perpetuating stagnation and undermining governance. Without credible reform or termination, the EU risks deepening regional divergence and weakening its long-term economic resilience.

This concluding chapter argues that EU Cohesion Policy, despite its stated goal of reducing regional disparities, has failed and should be terminated. Consuming over a third of the EU budget, structural funds have not delivered convergence; instead, they have fostered dependency, misallocation, and a resource curse that undermines competitiveness and governance. The EU continues to promote unrealistic claims about cohesion’s benefits while neglecting its core mission: enforcing the Single Market. Evidence shows that subsidies distort incentives, delay reforms, and weaken accountability, harming both poorer regions and the EU as a whole. The utopian vision of equalizing Member States through transfers is unattainable and counterproductive. Ending Cohesion Policy would free resources for priorities such as science, innovation, demographic resilience, and defence – areas critical for Europe’s future. Reform faces strong political resistance from net beneficiaries and entrenched interests, but pressure from net contributors will eventually make continuation unsustainable. A serious intellectual debate is urgently needed. Cohesion Policy has failed for decades; prolonging it risks further economic stagnation and geopolitical vulnerability. The time to end Europe’s resource curse is now.

This book offers a critical analysis of the European Union’s Cohesion Policy and its structural and investment funds. These instruments, aimed at reducing regional disparities and fostering growth, distribute billions annually to poorer EU regions. While rooted in noble intentions, evidence of their effectiveness is limited and inconclusive. I argue that this policy’s utopian vision is unattainable and that its implementation has become a major factor behind Europe’s economic stagnation, political malaise, and demographic challenges. Rather than promoting innovation and competitiveness, structural funds often perpetuate dependency and misallocation, undermining the EU’s long-term stability. Drawing on academic literature, media sources, and case studies – particularly from Portugal, Greece, southern Italy, and post-communist Member States – this book calls for the termination of these subsidies and a fundamental rethinking of EU priorities. It seeks to open a rigorous debate on the root causes of Europe’s decline and the urgent need for institutional reform to secure the Union’s future.

The Finnish pulp sector is the key actor responsible for the preference for a homogenous clearcut forest economy. This chapter examines the historic roots and global connections related to Finland’s post-2015 so-called bioeconomy boom. This boom prompted the construction of large “bioproduct” mills, which in practice produce export-oriented pulp that will be turned into cardboard and tissue. Finland is transforming from being the core of global paper production to being a semi-commodity producer. Fiber mass production and its accompanying energy production are key in delineating how forests are used, what kind of trees are grown, where, for how long, and based on what logic. The reasons why the pulp-driven forestry strategy and clearcutting model have continued against all logic are explored. This chapter uncovers how the pulp sector became dominant and the effects of the new contentious forest politics in the context of the “bioeconomy” and European Union (EU) legislation.

Chapter 5 traces the dynamics of our argument about the causes and consequences of IO withdrawal with three qualitative case studies: the US’ withdrawal from the ILO from 1977–1980, Japan’s withdrawal from the IWC in 2019, and the UK’s withdrawal from the EU in 2020. The cases show how states often think of withdrawal as a negotiation tool and highlight states’ long-term striving for “better” institutional arrangements through other mechanisms of “voice” before exit. In each case, we use archival research and media sources to document that the desire for IO change prompted exit, that states used withdrawal threats for negotiation, and that negotiation prior to withdrawal happened but fell short of the state’s goals, leading to withdrawal. In the cases of the ILO and IWC, negotiation continued while the state was a non-member and led to its return in the case of the ILO. The case studies also underscore the effects of withdrawal: Each of the withdrawing states suffered negative reputational and cooperative consequences and sometimes material consequences from withdrawal. International actors chastised withdrawing states, and the withdrawers then engaged in rhetorical stigma management to try to lessen the impact.

This chapter will take a fresh look at the need for harmonisation of UM protection in the EU. It will first look back at EU harmonisation efforts in the past (Section 2), before demonstrating the need for EU harmonisation (Section 3). It will then describe and question the traditional arguments for UM protection (Section 4). Thereafter, the chapter will lay out the EU’s policy options and analyse them critically (Section 5). It will become clear that there are no perfect solutions to address the need for harmonisation. The chapter will offer thoughts on a new conceptional starting point for further reform efforts (Section 6) before concluding (Section 7).

This chapter explores the environmental benefits and social challenges for the city of Dubai’s public transport network electrification plan. The Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) in Dubai is currently experimenting with the possibility of powering public buses with electric energy. The shift from fossil fuels to electric power has been experienced in many European cities with evidence of benefits for both the environment and citizens. The enhancement of public transport and the use of ‘CO2-free’ energy has made people less dependent on cars, reducing the amount of air pollution and easing traffic congestion on the roads. Air quality also improved significantly with direct and indirect results on people’s health and life quality. In the pledge for a reduction of CO2 emissions, the coverage of the entire territory of Dubai with an interconnected transport system, fuelled by electric power, is an achievement to pursue. The authors show evidence of this statement using data collected from a number of European experiences. To simulate the feasibility of a similar model in Dubai, the authors consider different contextual situations, such as climatic variation, urban forms, and social and cultural characteristics of users, enhancing the specificities of present technological research in alternative energy sources. Electrified and hydrogen-fuelled vehicles are analysed and their potential and limitations explained based on data and tests conducted in Europe.

The distinctive features of regional organizations arise from the fact that they strive to integrate a smaller set of countries but they often aim to reach across a wider range of substantive issues than the other international organizations in this book. The regional organizations in this chapter are vastly different from each other but they face the same challenge of integrating members on an almost limitless range of policies. They approach this challenge diversely: the EU has created powerful central authorities, including a bureaucracy and a legal hierarchy between the center and the member states; in contrast, the AU, ASEAN, and the OAS leave most powers of decision in the hands of meetings of their heads of government. These are more typical of regional international organizations in that they could in theory make forceful collective decisions but in practice their main contribution is as a forum in which intergovernmental negotiation takes place.

Drawing on 1,384 notifications, this chapter demonstrates increased nominal support concentrated among few members that has declined as a percentage of world agricultural value of production, with a shift toward relatively more support by developing country members. Trade-distorting Art. 6 support, subject to limit or exempt, has declined even nominally, while rising in China and India. There is a substantial shift toward green box support that accounts in recent years for nearly 80% of all support, with China accounting for over 40% of these expenditures. Given the exemptions and unused space for support subject to limits, the Agreement has not required members to lower their distortionary support. It has, however, provided guidance to policy evolution and a basis for benchmarking members’ support decisions. The trends and levels of Art. 6 and green box support reflect both members’ policy changes and continuing differences in their chosen support measures.

This chapter examines links between European peaceful borders and the occurrence and proliferation of illicit transnational flows. We refer to the European “internal” borders since the implementation of the Schengen Agreement in 1995, the Southeastern European borders (regarding the Western Balkans/former Yugoslavia) since the end of the Bosnian War in 1995, and the borders between the EU and its Western Balkan neighbors. We assess the softening and the complete opening of the internal borders among the twenty-six Schengen countries in contrast to external border control, as related to the occurrence and proliferation of illicit transnational flows. The two major European concerns in the last two decades are illegal migration and transnational crime, including drug trafficking, human trafficking and smuggling, arms trafficking, and terrorism. Harmonization of internal border controls has abolished the logic of jurisdictional arbitrage. Moreover, peaceful borders that are “hard” between the EU and its Southern and Eastern neighbors remain more controlled, though that it is not necessarily an obstacle for the occurrence of illicit transnational flows.