Last week at the European Week of Regions and Cities, which gathered thousands of participants from all over Europe, communication has been at the centre of the stage. The lack of awareness on Cohesion and Regional Policies among citizens is becoming an issue that needs to be tackle. Why the most local and tangible European policies are not even known by Europeans?

What are the 'local' European policies?

Europe provides fundings in different ways. About €450 billion of EU funding over the 2014-2020 programme period is allocated to Member States and implemented through nationally co-financed programmes.

ESI include five separate EU funds: the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the European Social Fund (ESF), the Cohesion Fund, the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) and the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF).

Being so important they contribute to a great extent to the real (and perceived) impact of the EU at the regional and local level, which, as you already know, are Perceive Project's research topics.

Why communication matters?

Quoting the Member of the European Parliament Lambert van Nistelrooij: "Are we lousy in communication?". In a nutshell, this question has been an important topic in several workshops during  the European Week of Regions and Cities. MEP and local authorities have been asking themselves if there's the need to change the way funds are communicated to European citizens. On October 10th we participated to a panel organized by Regione Calabria on the communication of ESI Funds: "Improving the Communication of ESI funds: the way forward". Our team brought some insights from our ongoing research: focus groups in the case-study regions (coordinated by the University of Bologna) and first findings from the citizens' survey (managed by University of Gothenburg).

On one hand, during Focus Groups we scanned themes at the core of communication plans in the 9 case-study regions, mainly awareness of the programmes and of the role of EU, and transparency. Participants have been asked what did they consider successful cases of communication.

The survey, on the other hand, proved the difficulty of impacting on citizens' beliefs about the EU. This dimension is relevant regarding the research objectives of Perceive: linking the implementation of regional cohesion policy to the level of citizens’ identification with the EU project as a whole, as well as capturing a general appreciation of the policy.

The case-study regions vary in the extent to which they have heard about these policies. While only around 20% of participants had heard about these policies in Essex (UK), nearly 80% had heard about them in Dolnoslaskie (Poland). The perceived benefit of Cohesion Policy varies as well among respondents: in UK 52% of respondents said that have benefitted from it, whereas in Italy only 12%.

We will share more about the analysis of Cohesion Policy's communication and survey results by the end of this month. Stay tuned!