Improving EU cohesion policy: The spatial distribution analysis of regional development investments funded by EU structural funds 2007/2013 in Italy

The incoming European Programming Period 2014-2020 addresses to the New Cohesion Policy the role of effective promotion of regional development. The principle of concentration on few strategic issues appears to be reached a mature approach through local Managing Authorities. This concentration affects several dimension of cohesion policy: economic development, social inclusion, labour market, place based instances, infrastructures, private investments. The spatial dimension of EU Regional Policies, since the first European programming cycle 1989s-1993, has not been analysed in deep due to the lack of data concerning programs implementation at regional level. During last years new tools have become available under the umbrella phenomena of open-data, VGI etc. In particular we refer to the project ‘opencoesione’ by Italian Ministry for Territorial Cohesion providing open data on Operative Programs funded by EU Structural funds. The service, with the general objective of improving Citizen Engagement on investments policies, offers a data set with specific information concerning each project (operative program, beneficiary, budget, funds etc.). The paper, after a general position of the actual issues of improving effectiveness of public investments in regional developing programs, describes the spatial data analysis process for the evaluation of spatial concentration of investments in the 2007-2013 programming period. The results are interesting for the opportunity to evaluate ‘ex-post’ aggregation of public and private investments. Conclusion regards possible application in developing incoming New Cohesion Policies at national and regional level.