The EU Cohesion Policies and the Lisbon Strategy

The underlying thesis of this essay is that the EU Lisbon Strategy and its overall goal of stimulating and fostering socially and ecologically sustainable development, growth and employment started a process of policy convergence that led to the Lisbon Strategy occupying several other policies' agendas and objectives. This applies especially to the EU Cohesion Policy and the Structural Funds as well as to the structural part of the Common Agricultural Policy. The essay also shows some of the limitations the implementation of the EU's policy agenda faces, especially because of budget limitations and shared responsibilities between the EU and national authorities of the Member States. A short chapter on the funding policy of the EU, e.g. the Research Framework Programmes, completes the essay.