Public Seminar 'Regional Economic Development and Democratic Renewal in the EU: What Share of Governance for the English Regions '

Tuesday 7 April 2009, 1:00-2:00pm
at Room 212, Level 2, 234 Queensberry Street, The University of Melbourne
A Spinelli Lecture

presented by

Houari Mired

(PhD candidate Sorbonne-Paris III)

download audio mp3 (approx 12MB)

Abstract

The current global crisis has raised a great deal of concern among EU member states as to whether the current model of economic governance has been effective. While these questions have always been present for the Union, today’s economic context has thrust them to the centre of the debate. However, this question has most often been focused at the level of the member states when in fact much of the EU’s activities in economic governance are conducted at the regional level. It is to the regions that we should look in order to analyze the effectiveness of EU economic policies over past decades, an analysis which may contribute to a more measured assessment of the orientations that have been adopted.

The "lagging" English regions offer a perfect case-study in this regard, as they have benefited significantly from EU structural funds, while at the same time battling a strong centralizing trend that has made them highly dependent on Whitehall in terms of development. The attempts of the EU to reinforce subsidiarity led to the emergence of a new mode of governance that the British government termed "democratic renewal". The study of the management of the EU structural funds in the English regions can offer an effective analytic field for evaluating reforms adopted at the supranational and national levels.

Bio

Houari Mired is completing a PhD at the Sorbonne University dealing with the impact of European regional policy on the governance of the European structural funds in the UK. He was a Marie-Curie Research Fellow at the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS) at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. His research interests include the transport industries in the UK, the governance of the British labour market, and regional development issues in the EU and North Africa.

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