EVALUATION OF GOVERNANCE MODELS ON REGIONAL DISPARITIES

Since the inception, the European Employment Strategy have incorporated the local dimension, by inviting Member States to involve the regional and local levels with a focus on job creation.

A consistent, comprehensive approach was included in the Employment Guidelines for 2001 and 2002: "All actors at the regional and local levels, including the social partners, must be mobilised to implement the European Employment Strategy by identifying the potential of job creation at local level and strengthening partnerships to this end".

Despite important differences from one country to another, national employment policies increasingly take into account the role that local and regional actors, especially regional and local administrations, can play in the European Employment Strategy.

Yet wide regional disparities still exist in the EU in terms of unemployment, there can be no doubt that acting at local level can significantly contribute in reducing these differences, especially in areas suffering from specific geographical or structural handicaps.

The FGB’s research activities aim at evaluating how far national governance models contribute to (or obstruct) the achievement of the European Employment Strategy's (EES) policy objectives. The main question of our research is thus to assess - in itinere - how the current process of decentralization has affected the implementation of EES strategies.

This entails two main objectives:

• to assess the impact of EES policies within a context of growing decentralization, by looking at the strategies and their effectiveness in several italian regions;
• to answer the more general question how the planning, decision making and implementation process of EES policies is affected by such fundamental governance changes as Italy has been and is undergoing in recent years.