Javier Escribá, María José Murgui

The ERDF Fund (2014-2020) in the spanish Regions

This work addresses the policy of strengthening the regional cohesion of the co-financed programs with the ERDF fund in the period 2014-2020 in Spain. The relationship between regional imbalances in R&D, ICT, SMEs and low-carbon economics and the funds allocated for their correction is analyzed. The planned investments are, in general, relatively larger in the regions with the worst initial situation in the imbalances mentioned. However, in all of them, progress is being made towards the transformation of the current economic model towards a more sustainable one, linked to innovation and the digital society. We start from the aggregate results for the Spanish economy that we obtained in a previous work and here we quantify the effects that on the economic growth and the employment of the Spanish regions would have the execution of the co-financed programs with the FEDER Fund 2014-2020. The regional impact of co-financed programs with the ERDF fund tends to create more employment and increase GDP per capita in the most economically depressed regions.

Keywords: Regional development; European Cohesion Policy; European Funds

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