Regional policy across Europe is being shaped by an increasingly complex and unstable environment marked by interlocking megatrends, structural inequalities, and governance challenges. Policymakers face the dual task of addressing long-term structural shifts while responding to sudden crises and heightened security concerns.
The megatrends of climate change, demographic transition and digitalisation continue to exert profound territorial impacts, creating both risks and opportunities. These are compounded by the effect of other significant drivers of change, not least geopolitical instability and security pressures, which shape the context for regional policy making.
Spatial inequalities can be mapped and understood through conceptual lenses such as development trap, left-behind places, lock-in and places that don’t matter. Each offer distinct insights but are only partially integrated into policy making in practice.
Changes in regional policy strategies, governance and tools, identified by EoRPA research over the past year, point to a number of trends. In terms of strategic direction, security continues to rise up the agenda with defence and resilience shaping policy in Poland, Sweden, Finland and others. Place-based and mission-oriented approaches continue to influence policy, shaping the approach to governance as well as efforts to territorialise strategy design and implementation in Austria, Norway and the Netherlands among many others. Foresight and anticipatory policymaking are gaining traction, with Germany and Finland seeking new indicator systems to support a more future-oriented policy.
In governance, decentralisation trends are ongoing, illustrated by England’s devolution reforms and fiscal strengthening of sub-national government in Poland, Spain and Estonia. Coordination remains a critical challenge, with new institutional reforms in Slovenia, Czechia and Lithuania designed to improve vertical and horizontal policy alignment. Capacity-building measures to strengthen regional administrative capacity can be seen in a number of countries including Sweden and Scotland.
In terms of policy tools, changes over the past year include the targeting of funding on most disadvantaged areas or communities, including in Italy, and measures to support regional competitiveness including in Hungary, Romania and Belgium.
A fuller summary of all the information covered in the report is provided in the Concluding Overview.