Abstract:

Enlarging the European Community to Mediterranean area led to sharp differences among Member States, Portugal being the country with the lowest level of development (GDP / capita = 35,06% compared to the EU average), along with Greece (58.26%) and Spain (58.57%) compared with the level of development of the founding Member States (eg France and Germany- GDP / capita of over 120% compared to the EU average, except for Italy where GDP growth was slow). Although the geostrategic extendion had positive implications on the free market concepts in the context of "regional convergence", disparities have widened significantly, thusrequiring rapid intervention to support the economies of Member newcomers Portugal and Spain are the main beneficiaries of the Cohesion Policy: Spain (ECU 14.2 billion), Portugal (9.2 billion ECU) of the total budget of the Structural Funds budget: ECU 69 billion (25% of the EU budget). Following this financial support, Portugal had anincrease from 35.06% in 1986 to 46.17% in 1994, and 67.42% in 2007 and as suchwe can speak of a significant effect of the cohesion Police. But the situation changed in the period 2007-2012, caused by the economic crisis, registering a decline to 63.70% of the EU average. If nationwide we can talk about convergence, in the regions of Portugal, divergence rates increase, recording amazing improvements in metropolitan areas, and decrease in the island regions. Moreover, the impact on the main indicators of regional cohesion policy begins to be uncertain.
Given this situation, but also taking into consideration the statistics from the employment, education and tourism sectors, this paper aims to analyze, on the basis ogffixed-effects panel data models, the regional social and economic development of Portugal under use of funds under Regional Operational Program as basic instruments of cohesion policy.