Our focus is on 'economic and social cohesion and solidarity' and on cohesion policy. As with any policy, a critical evaluation covers four basic questions:

-  how to define cohesion?

-  how to measure cohesion?

-  how to explain cohesion?

-  how to stimulate cohesion?

Joseph Stiglitz wrote ' If you don't measure the right thing, you don't do the right thing'. But before measuring the right thing, one must, first of all, define the right or real thing.

1. Regional policy

Striving for cohesion at the regional level, the Eu is kind of leapfrogging the member states. The latter are closer to disparities, the diversity of their constituent regions and their development potential. And as subsidiarity is not restricted to the relation between member states and the EU - but rather starts at home - one could also imagine,  first of all, a national cohesion or regional policy. For example, an Italian policy to tackle the 'Gordian knot' of the Mezzogiorno. If there are indeed other 'mezzogiornos', a Polish cohesion policy is required to deal with Eastern Poland or a German policy to with regard to Eastern Germany (Kuklinski, Malak-Petlicka & Zuber, 2010). Even in a small country like Belgium. 'the landscape of economic mass is bumpy' (The World Bank,2009: 50). Belgium certainly has a real problem of national cohesion.

Only if member states prove unable to deal adequately with their internal cohesion, the European Union should intervene. The current predicament of the so-called PIIGS countries does not leave much room for a national cohesion policy, leave alone a high priority for national cohesion.