The multiple accountabilities of EU cohesion policy: Wicked problem or north star?
The chapter examines the accountability of cohesion policy, namely the different types of accountability pursued by the regulations – financial, procedural and performance accountability – and the trade-offs that exist between them and with policy effectiveness. It asks whether different types of accountability can indeed be pursued to the same degree or, on the contrary, whether cohesion policy risks becoming less effective by trying to chase too many types of accountability at the same time. It argues that different types of accountability are not pursued to the same degree due to the diverse levels of ‘cogency’ associated with different policy functions and concludes that, while the regulations encourage programme authorities to favour financial and procedural accountability over performance accountability, they are also leading to progressive, piecemeal improvements in those areas of programme management that relate to performance accountability. Introducing more cogency in the rules associated to the latter could strengthen performance accountability, but only provided that more resources are also allocated to these tasks.
