Scaling beyond north and south: local agency of Finnish municipalities in European structural funds

Increasing regional differentiation and discontent in Europe have directed critical attention to European territorial cohesion policy and the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESI Fund) mechanism. There is wide literature investigating macro-level processes of regional differentiation and cohesion as well as the efficiency of multi-level governance in the implementation of the funding mechanism. This study contributes to the existing multidisciplinary literature on cohesion policy and structural funds by extending an understanding of the ESI Funds system to a local agency perspective with a specific focus on Finnish municipalities and the programme period 2014–2020, characterized by austerity policies, regional discontent and disagreement between the ESI programme regions. The examination offers a new understanding of local agents and beneficiaries’ differential access in the ESI Funds, showing that the agency of municipalities in the ESI Funds is simultaneously enabled and constrained by the multilevel Structural Funds programme’s areas of specialization, national regional policies, partnerships and the local environment. The findings indicate that generating inclusive and equal possibilities for all municipalities would necessitate more attention to the allocation of ESI Funds within the programme regions, not just between them.