The role of the EU in ‘levelling up’ its territory, through an increasing range of policies and funded programmes that have been developed since the Treaty of Rome in 1957, is more publicly recognised than many others that it performs. The now familiar cycle of seven year Cohesion programmes, funding projects and investment, accompanied by public sign boards of acknowledgement of EU contributions, have been a significant means of communicating the EU’s vision and values in tangible and local ways. While not overcoming any charges of a democratic deficit, the Cohesion policies are designed to reduce economic and social differences between different places across the EU’s territories, providing the EU with a public face that can meet local circumstances. In the UK, as seen in the Brexit Referendum outcome, the provision of this EU support to more deprived areas was so engrained in local life that local politicians could not understand why it was not being maintained after the UK left the EU. Elsewhere in Europe, this local role of the EU is perhaps better understood.

Yet the EU’s initiatives at the substate level have not always been welcomed by member state governments who have regarded these Cohesion programmes as undermining their own role in decision-making and, in some cases, political preferences for locations receiving support. While the identification of the areas to receive these funds is done in an open and transparent way, the specific projects and programmes have been left to be managed within the arena of domestic policies and choices, albeit within overarching frameworks.

In Lisa Dellmuth’s book, we see an interesting evaluation of these European Union (EU) objectives and their redistributive outcomes, with a particular focus on the 2006-2013 Cohesion programme cycle. In tackling the application of Cohesion policy and any consequent changes in local economic and social indicators, Dellmuth has constructed her own data evaluation model to examine how effective these policies have been. This is interesting to consider, since most of the evaluation of Cohesion programmes has been commissioned by the European Commission (EC) and have focused on governance and delivery issues rather than the effective improvements that might have been stimulated in specific locations. Dellmuth’s findings demonstrate that these programmes have had little effect in changing the relative disadvantages in the areas that they are designed to target. In some cases the funding is diverted to more prosperous areas, for political or policy reasons while these more prosperous areas have advantages which growing economies emphasise, confirm and accelerate. They are also more resilient to the economic downtowns such as that in 2007, which stimulated this research. She also notes that the role of member states is selection of projects and methods can also serve to support more economically successful locations.

While Dellmuth’s assessment focuses on the effects on this Cohesion policy, the text also illuminates other key issues that would be worth more discussion. These include the insights that her research provides on central/local relations within member states, and member state/EC relationships in decision making. It also reflects a changing approach to policy making within the EU that has not received much consideration which is the attempts that are gradually being made to move from policy and programme silos within the Commission to those which are spatially focussed and more integrated. While not examining the 2014-2020 Cohesion programme in detail, Dellmuth does discuss the role of member state Partnership Agreements, instituted for the first time in this round. These have been required to incorporate the principles of subsidiarity, further extended in 2009 but too late for the previous programme under review here, which are clearer about the role of member state governments in relation to their substate areas. However, there remains a continuing discussion about whether these Partnership Agreements should supplement domestic polices in the member states or set out how they will work with their substate governments in general, as the EU adopted subsidiarity principles set out.

While Dellmuth shows that the EU’s Cohesion programmes have not achieved their redistribution objectives in the ways intended, as Rothstein indicates in his introduction, she does make a coherent and convincing case that the EU should be using social investment to promote well-being to support inclusive growth. In the last chapter, Dellmuth discusses how this inclusive growth can be fostered within the EU. It could be through an increasing pooling of social policy delivery within the member states or through a differential balance in expenditure, increasing the budget for Cohesion policy and programmes from its current level of 20% of the EU regional policy expenditure that has been in place since 2000. Or should it be through compliance audits to check the extent to which member states have achieved the EU’s social goals? Dellmuth argues that such an approach would support views on the EU’s legitimacy with its citizens.

This is a thought provoking book and the issues that it raises are timely, not least as the EU faces some debate about its future – stimulated by changes in the political leadership of Germany, for example. Within the EC, discussions will now be taking place on the preparation of the next Cohesion programme 2028-2034 and Dellmuth’s analysis of the effect of past Cohesion programmes could give some strength to the arguments for more change – towards increasingly integrated programmes, more specific outcome criteria and greater focus on member state monitoring and compliance. While the electorate’s views on the EU as demonstrated in the 2016 Brexit referendum does not appear to be replicated in other member states, there are issues about the extent of EU power for determining governance and funding allocations that may grow in some member states. However, while this takes place, the position of the EU as welfarist and socially redistributive organisation is not in doubt. Dellmuth’s book should help to raise the questions about how it can be more effective in achieving these objectives.