The Impacts of Public Policies for Regional Development in Portugal

The major goal of this work is to evaluate the level of effectiveness of those efforts made by the European Commission towards the socio-economic cohesion in Europe by using the single case-study of Portugal. This paper presents the long lasting efforts for regional development in the country by using some data that reports the received aids and their use from 1990 up to 2006. The analysis focuses on the desegregation of such data to regional level. At the same time it is emphasised that, at a time when cohesion is no more the sole goal of European policy, Portugal faces the paradox of trying to raise regional capacities for global competition (without having yet defined what regional strategies are) and, at the same time, wishing to increase its potential scientific and technological capacity, mainly located in the very circumscribed areas of Lisbon and Porto. In order to illustrate such a situation, the exemplar case of the Programme PRIME was presented. This is one of the best examples of the recent support a system, indirectly financed by European founds; PRIME was fully structured as a Portuguese policy instrument to support the modernization of the entrepreneurial tissue at national level. The provided data demonstrates how discussable the level of success of such programme is. Our general conclusions will drive to a dual discussion: the asymmetric use of the financing systems provided by the E.C. and the north/south endemic dichotomy existing in the country generates a path dependency that does not reduce and a trend that should concern Portuguese policy makers deeper than it does.