The social cohesion as an objective of the European Union

The Article introduces a series of basic notions for understanding how the European Union approaches the General Objective of Social and Economical Cohesion. Starting from a brief outline of Regional Development and of the evolution of the Structural Funds, as instruments for reducing the regional socio-economic disparities, the Author underlines the important contribution of the 1986 Single European Act and presents Community Policies that influence the pursuit of the Cohesion Objective. In this respect, the main policy is, of course, the Regional Development Policy, but the article also points out how economic and monetary integration policies, agricultural policy, horizontal policies like HR or Environment, as well as other Community Policies for sectors like Transports, R&D, Energy, SMEs or Fishing try to articulate the measures intended to contribute to achieving Economic and Social Cohesion. From this integrated perspective, the succesive reforms of the Structural Funds managed to create a coherent framework of the instruments used by the Union. The process remains an evolutive one, and the European Union has to make important decisions for the future, in connection to further integration following succesive enlargements that increased the development gaps among its regions.