An Appraisal of Regional Development Policy in the Aquitaine Region

French economic policy has always paid considerable attention to the subject of regional development. The field of action has even been considerably extended in recent years, with separate projects for crisis areas giving way to a more general policy aiming to eliminate imbalances in the growth pattern of the country’smajor economic regions. The present trend is towards measures to improve the geographical distribution of economic activity and budgetary expenditures. Today, the requirements of European integration (profitability, increasing productivity, concentration and the like), the industrial readaptation necessitated by the depressed conditions in such sectors as textiles, the progress in techniques and marketing, the slowdown of growth in a climate of recession, and the need to satisfy collective needs in economically active regions whose infrastructures (roads, recreational facilities and so on) have reached saturation point, are all factors promoting intervention by the public authorities which tends to benefit highly developed regions as much as, or more than, backward ones. It may well be that equality of development opportunities for all regions has always been an illusion; but it appears ever more true that the mechanisms of economic growth and the logic governing changes in economic structures operate to prevent any reduction of existing imbalances.