Differenze regionali nell'UE e ridefinizione dell'intervento comunitario

The EU enlargement process gave great impulse to the rethinking of the agricultural policy that characterized the Mid Term Review and has opened a deep debate about the future of the European structural intervention. The paper analyses the main elements of the diverse development within the enlarged EU regions, in order to determine the priorities that the EU should tackle to attain the economic and social cohesion by the treaty. This is done through a two step analysis. First, by means of a principal component analysis, based on data at NUTS2 level for the EU-25, the main factors od differentiation among regions have been identified; then, a cluster analysis has been used to characterize groups of regions having similar problems and policy needs. In many regions development issues are found to be related to the agricultural sector. As a consequence, dealing with development problems with an integrated approach could help to tune an agricultural intervention more in accord with the EU cohesion policy.