To contribute to the debate on future cohesion policy, Commissioner Danuta Hübner asked Dr. Fabrizio Barca (Director General, Ministry of Economy & Finance, Italy) to prepare an independent report containing an assessment of the effectiveness of cohesion policy to date as well as a series of proposals how to reform cohesion policy for the period post 2013.

In this context, Mr. Barca has organised eight hearings and seminars with academic experts and policy makers. The results of these discussions, those of ten working papers prepared for the report and a review of the economic literature and emprirical evidence served as the basis for drawing up the findings of the report.

The report discusses the economic rationale and motivation of an EU place based development policy and provides an assessment of EU cohesion policy. In addition it identifies a limited number of core priorities on which to focus cohesion policy. Finally, it presents recommendations on key pillars of cohesion policy governance pinpointed for reform.

The proposals of the report have been developed in full independence from the Commission. They provide many interesting ideas for the ongoing debate on future cohesion policy.

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Excerpt, p. XVII:

"A strong case is also made for including Migration among the priority issues. Given the scale of migration, a large number of people in Europe are involved: the people moving to work in some areas of the EU, the people living in the areas where migration inflows take place, and the people experiencing (inside and outside Europe) the outflows from the area where they live. For each of these categories new opportunities go together with new risks. The final balance of advantages and disadvantages depends on how communities adjust and it is affected by the way public goods and services (urban planning, education, public transport, healthcare, social services and so on) are adapted to the change involved. Some places might fail to adjust, as is already apparent from existing tensions, and here place-based interventions are needed to avoid new problems of social exclusion. By building on the creation in 2007 of an Integration Fund, cohesion policy would allow a strategy to be run with a feasible and efficient allocation of responsibilities: the EU would establish the general principles of intervention and ensure the setting of common objectives; Member States and Regions would adapt policies to different social and cultural aspirations; local authorities would design projects to meet the needs of the local communities concerned."