Features on structural policies in regional development of the European Union and their main effects

The study moves from the observation that, at EU level, has assisted in the last 15-20years a process of general economic and social transformation. And in this context, theseasons of the program of structural policies have been evolving, despite the disputedassessments, and sometimes conflicting, the results achieved by the academics of thefield (but also of public operators) between those who advocate policies interventionmore or less innovative, and those who prefer to focus on traditional developmentpolicies, even if with some adjustments. Whatever model is chosen and applied,structural policies would (or should have) the objective of reducing socio-economicgaps between regions of the European Union, the enlargement processes occurring - inthe transition from a Union of 15 countries have contributed to a 27 to stress, combinedwith the impact of global financial and economic crisis, manifested since 2007 and stillin progress. The proposed analysis may contribute to the need to identify a non-trivialdefinition of the concept of evaluation of public policies in order to capitalize on theexperience of community programs in general and political cohesion and StructuralFunds in particular, in a transition period in which they tend to spread as the ordinarypractices of government.