As a concept, regional development implies continuous financial support from the state and high
degree of coordination between the ministries, donors and stakeholders at regional and at local
level. Regional policy is one of most prominent features in functioning of the European Union, where
it is called the Cohesion Policy1
and whose goal is to improve welfare of the regions across Europe
and reduce regional imbalances.
Adoption of the regional development policy in Republic of Macedonia implied an attempt for
alignment of national priorities with those defined under EU’s policy on economic and social
cohesion and those identified in the Lisbon Strategy.2
This alignment was made for the purpose of
stimulating development of planning regions in line with the EU guidelines, and for capacity building
of planning regions and local self-government units for utilization of relevant components under IPA
available to Macedonia.
In Republic of Macedonia, the Law on Balanced Regional Development was adopted in 2007 and
implied one of the most important steps towards introduction of new approach to address the
problem that, for decades had been treated as underdevelopment of certain specific areas,
underdeveloped regions, etc.3
This piece of legislation explicitly defined the policy on stimulating
balanced regional development as system of goals, instruments and measures aimed at addressing
regional disparities and attaining sustainable development in Republic of Macedonia.
The need for adoption of this law and policy was justified with long-standing absence of regional
development policy and dominant concentration of most economic activities in Skopje region and
partial development of greater urban centres in other planning regions. High concentration of
population and economic activities in urban centres has negative effects on social and spatial
aspects of development, ultimately resulting in extinction of large portion of rural settlements, while
creating problems in operation of urban centres due to the lack of relevant technical and social
infrastructure that would sustain higher population density. Therefore, disparities emerged in
economic, social and other aspects of development between and within planning regions and
provided the starting point for regional development planning.
All strategic, programme and planning documents that followed after the law’s adoption, as well as
projects for implementing the policy on balanced regional development (hereinafter: ERD) in the last
10 years have brought to the surface numerous shortfalls and problems in policy performance,
marked by many delays and breaches of law-stipulated deadlines.