Territorialising the EU Cohesion Policy in Inner Peripheries. Italy’s National Strategy for Inner Areas

With the 1988 reform of the Structural Funds, the European Union kicked-off the so-called cohesion policy, aiming to reduce disparities between the levels of development of its regions. On the one hand, the reform provided the EU Commission leeway in the articulation of the funding objectives and the related eligibility criteria. On the other hand, the attribution of the programming function to the national and regional authorities de facto delegated to them any decision concerning the actual territorialisation of their spending. This conundrum was highlighted by the so-called ‘Barca Report’, an independent study initiated by Commission and arguing in favour of the modernisation of the EU cohesion policy through the adoption of a placed-based approach to territorial challenges. Whereas the latter fell short in influencing the Commission’s proposals for the period 2014–2020, its logics trickled-down to the Italian arena, leading to the institution of the National Strategy for Inner Areas (SNAI), in an innovative attempt to territorialise the use of the EU structural funds in the country’s most vulnerable areas. With the recent relaunch of the SNAI for the 2021-2027 programming period, the chapter reflects on the 2014-2020 experience, discussing its potentials for developing virtuous multilevel governance relations, as well as the risks implicit in its high subsidiarity.