European Regional Policy has been essential for less developed regions. Interventions co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) were crucial, creating infrastructures such as roads, airports, hospitals, schools and universities in these territories, improving the quality of life, territorial connection and qualification of citizens.
However, the economic turmoil, which has affected more intensely in recent years some countries of the European Union, has highlighted the inadequacies of these investments.
Essentially tangible in nature, the effective exploitation of these infrastructures has been considered too expensive in a context of austerity.
Measures to reduce public expenditure affected essential intangible investments and resulted, in different member states, in inadequate exploitation of existing infrastructure.
An example from the Portuguese case is the reduction in public contracting of human resources for the National Scientific and Technological System, which restricts the full use of the potential built up in recent decades in Portugal.
After years of optimism about the harmonizing potential of European integration, we are currently witnessing movements to concentrate financial and human resources in central countries.
The center of Europe, the European Pentagon, which links London, Hamburg, Munich, Milan and Paris, concentrates around half of the European Product, and even more, around ¾, of the investment in R&D.
Nationally, we are also witnessing, increasingly, this polarizing effect, of the main cities on other territories.
The concentration of scientific and technological resources results from a vision based on two cumulative dynamics.
On the one hand, private actors tend to privilege their location close to sources of knowledge, promoting proximity dynamics that induce clustering benefits, on the other, public actors tend to benefit from support programs for Science, Technology and Innovation ( S&T+I) with criteria anchored in critical mass and evaluation of excellence.
This is a vision focused on competitiveness, which ignores the role that S&T+I can play in regional empowerment and in destroying vicious circles of non-development.
Another way is possible. That may counteract the trend that makes, for example, European countries with the scientific and technological profile of Portugal, after all, to be net contributors to European research programs (such as FP7) and not their beneficiaries.
The alternative to be viable must promote smart specialization, a notion advocated as a central paradigm in the Europe 2020 Strategy, and which is based on a process of developing a collective regional vision, identifying competitive advantages, the definition of strategic priorities and the use of smart policies to maximize the knowledge-based development potential of the region, be it more or less developed, with greater or lesser technological intensity.
Such a perspective could promote the cohesion of certain regions, such as the Algarve, which today seem virtually doomed to economic insignificance.
These regions are concentrated in many cases in southern countries, which have been pejoratively designated as PIIGS (because they include Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Greece and Spain). Southern European regions have valuable underexploited resources in the Sea economy and are also often tourist destinations that attract millions of visitors each year.
With a strategic direction and adequate intervention, focusing on employment and a competitive, intelligent and diversified economy, new development poles can become attractive, not only for the mild temperature, sun exposure and coastal zones, but also for the opportunities resulting from innovative dynamics .
For that, it is necessary to stimulate S&T+I in these territories, promoting the dynamization and profitability of the investments already made. And not its dismantling.
Author Hugo Pinto
Effective Member of the Order of Economists
Researcher at CES, University of Coimbra, and Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Economics, University of Algarve
PhD in Economics from the University of Coimbra
Note: Article published under the protocol between the Sul Informação and the Algarve Delegation of the Order of Economists
Comments