Other regional dating

Each EU country has a different way of dividing its territory into administrative units.

For the purposes of managing programmes and comparing statistics, the EU devised the NUTS system - dividing each country into statistical units (NUTS regions).

The EU is currently divided into 274 ‘NUTS 2 level’ regions (from 800 000 to 3 million inhabitants).

More than half of the budget – €182.2 billion – has been set aside for less developed regions, which have a GDP of less than 75 % of the EU-27 average.In the 2014-2020 budgetary period, coordination and coherence between cohesion policy and the other EU policies contributing to regional development, namely rural development and fisheries and maritime policy, has been strengthened by laying down common provisions for the ERDF, the ESF, the Cohesion Fund, the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD), and the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF).All five funds together are known as the European Structural and Investment (ESI) Funds.Under the rules for the 2014-2020 programming period, each EU country must publish up-to-date lists of all those receiving assistance from the ESI Funds.ERDF and Cohesion Fund recipients The rules specify certain categories of eligible expenditure.