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A Comment on my deconstruction of Professor Hazels report on The English Question suggests that there is no linkage between the devolution and EU Regionalisation.

I must agree that this is a much argued contention by those who oddly are recipients of EU largess, who œincidentally also support and promote the devolution process, including the break up of England into 9 separate political regions.

Basically The English Question is to address the problems left by Tony Blair`s unfinished destruction of Britain as a political unit. From Hazell`s point of view there is only one answer to The English Question, and that is to destroy England, that without doubt would be one way of addressing the problems but as Hazell makes clear;

“Regionalism Is Not a Complete Answer Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have powers to make laws in their devolved assemblies and substantial executive powers over major public services such as health, education, and local government. English regional assemblies would have had no lawmaking power and no executive powers to speak of.”

However back to the suggestion that the EU is not relevant to the devolution process, we do not have to search far to find overwhelming evidence in official and academic reports, that give the lie to this suggestion.

Regions in the European Union
By Michael Keating *

“European integration has been a powerful stimulus to territorial mobilisation in Western Europe, but at the same time it has provided new mechanisms to manage the consequences. The erosion of state sovereignty and the sharing of power that it imposes allow a more flexible constitutional order in which questions of jurisdiction do not become absolutes but can be negotiated. In multinational states like Spain, Belgium and the United Kingdom, this has permitted a programme of decentralisation and a degree of recognition of the special needs of particular areas, within the overall framework of Europe.”

Martin Burch, Ricardo Gomez, Simon Bulmer (University of Manchester),
Patricia Hogwood (University of Glasgow), Caitriona Carter and Andrew
Scott (University of Edinburgh)
The English Regions and the European Union

Paper No. 2
Devolution and European Union Policy Making Series
May 14, 2003

“Sub-national involvement in EU policies and politics is an established feature of the
European integration process. Over the course of several decades, interaction between
different levels of government within and beyond the nation state has become a defining characteristic of the EU.”

But in what way has the EU influenced and driven the policy of devolution?

Firstly we must define “the EU effect”. That is change that would not have happened or would not have happened in the way it has, if it were not for the existence of the EU or arrangements and interaction resulting from the creation and growth of the EU.

How has the EU exerted its influence on these developments; for an official answer to that question we need only turn to the Final Report to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) December 2003

“The Structural Funds are the primary instrument for implementing EU regional policy across the Member States. They were initially designed and have subsequently evolved to reflect key EU policy priorities,
The Structural Funds have a specific remit to complement Member State regional
development policies but there are differences in emphasis and some scope for
European monies to influence national spending priorities:

The European Commission’s role as a partner in the implementation of the
Structural Funds means that its perspective on the barriers to development in a
particular programme area, and the necessary solutions, can influence the nature
of strategies that are adopted.”

So the answer to the question is money or the availability of funding directly from the EU (of course this is our money in the first place, which the EU then returns to us with strings attached in order to facilitate EU objectives,)

This is not quite the end of the matter however as the report continues;

“The requirement to use domestic funding sources to match-fund or co-finance
Structural Fund programmes, and the desire on the part of regional and other
actors to maximise the ‘draw-down’ from the Structural Funds, has the potential to
influence how domestic funding streams are deployed.”

So not only does EU funding influence regional policy it influence our own government spending.

Michael Keating
“The European Commission considers that the ability of the Structural Funds to influence policy development in Member States to reflect EU policy goals and to act as stimulus for increased integration of policy across the EU is one of the principal areas where community added value can be identified.”

Back to the The English Regions and the European Union, paper and a question of relative meanings:

The Emergence of “New English Regionalism”: 1991-97
“Prior to 1997, regional involvement in European Union policy making was very much a
‘bottom up’ development. In some regions key actors began to organise themselves to
respond to the challenges of economic regeneration and in particular to the opportunities presented by European funding programmes.”

The writers are claiming here that there was a bottom up movement for devolution, but say that it was driven “in particular by the European funding programmes”. Which they seem to have missed was a top down movement and therefore the driver for the later bottom up movement.

Back to Keating, who says:

“The whole policy was to be guided by the principle of subsidiarity, with the greatest possible involvement of regional and local interests and the social partners in the world of business, labour and voluntary groups. The Commission, in line with contemporary thinking on development policy, also sought to move from infrastructure to human capital, productive investment and endogenous development, giving opportunities for a more active and participatory role for regional actors of various sorts.

This should have encouraged greater regional involvement in policy making and stronger direct links between the Commission and regional interests, and to some extent this has happened. States without regional structures have had to create them, or a least some substitute for them, in order to be eligible for funds—for example in Greece, Ireland and Sweden. The new funds have stimulated a great deal of political mobilisation (Hooghe 1996) even in places like England, without a developed regionalism (Burch and Holliday 1993). There has been an explosion of regional lobbying and offices in Brussels. Regional actors have been brought into contact with Commission officials and its thinking on development policy has been diffused through the mechanism of partnership”

So we can see it was the EU decision to only offer funding to regions and not to nation states, which drove the devolution process from the very beginning, in order for the regions to receive funding there had to be a political mechanism in place, first to apply for and then to distribute funding.

This fact is confirmed in the paper The English Regions and the European Union,

it is important to acknowledge the significance of the structural funds in encouraging the emergence of sub-national governance in England.”

“Two principles introduced in the 1988 and 1993 reforms to the European Regional Development Fund – partnership and programming – highlight this point. The partnership concept, incorporated in the 1988 Framework Regulation, codified a Commission commitment to the inclusion of sub-national actors that had existed since the foundation of EU regional policy in the 1970s. It required tripartite consultation between the Commission, Member States and designated sub-national authorities in the formulation of development plans, the implementation of programmes and the monitoring and evaluation process. Power to designate and to take key decisions about the programmes rested with central governments. But the partnership principle clearly encouraged sub-national participation and assisted the creation of new, regionally focused, policy communities (Bache 1998: 103). The programming concept complemented partnership by setting out a procedural map for the negotiation of multi-annual plans and there were, in particular, two aspects of this which encouraged the emergence of regional players and structures. Firstly, implementing authorities had to be consulted by the Commission and member
governments during this complex and lengthy process. Secondly, the 5-year time frame of the plans ensured continuity and stability for the participants in the funding process. The series of reforms to the ERDF between 1988 and 1993 thus provided one of the significant drivers for regional engagement, albeit with varying outcomes across the English regions partly depending on the scale of the funds allocated.”

Elsewhere in the report;

“Regional differences in receipts of Structural Funds have clearly been a factor in accounting for the way organisational structures have developed.”

And

Conclusion
There was considerable variation in the way that English regions became engaged on the European issue in the pre-1997 ‘phase’. This variation in part reflected differences in the pattern of regional emergence across the nine. A pragmatic ‘new English regionalism’emerged in some areas. This emphasised economic concerns, was confined to core elites and reflected the specific characteristics of each region. It developed in tandem with the creation of integrated Government Offices in the regions. However, the timing, scope and impact of change in English regional governance was significantly driven by the Structural Funds and thus by the European Union.

Much of the substantive change over the period originated at the regulative level
with the new obligations imposed on central government and regional authorities by the Structural Funds regulations of 1988 and 1993. Important changes in processes and
organisations within the regions were a direct result of ERDF decision-making
requirements. The programming concept helped to both develop and consolidate the
regional tier by creating a clear focus for the activities of regional players. Formal requirements to operate on the basis of partnership also exerted a powerful regionalising effect by forcing those actors involved in delivering Structural Funds programmes to devise new ways of working with sub-national interests.

This I think and hope puts an end to the suggestion that the EU has nothing to do with the devolution process or the break up of England into 9 separate political regions, it is patently was and still is an EU driven movement towards an EU of the regions. Which in its most radical understanding, implies the dissolution of the nation-state as most of the central government functions are started to be carried out by the EU and regional and local authorities.