Mark REINHARD

Switzerland currently works on the new regional policy (NPR), which splits with a 30-year long tradition. Until now, regional policy aimed to support peripheral regions in order to stay competitive or to get the opportunity for a better development. It was a matter of national equity. This is now replaced by a project-logic which leads to a competition between regions.

Based on a project logic and the dynamism of urban centres, the NPR will probably face the risk to emphasise the gap between regions which are already on the path to success and the other, less developed. This could be even much more the case, regarding the fact that the NPR tends to be knowledge-based. This latter concept seems to be very interesting on the European level, but we have to question the relevance of it considering the small regional entities.

The two aspects mentioned before could lead to increasing inequality between Swiss regions, not at least because of the lack of definition of what is meant by region. This point is to be clarified by each Canton, and here as well as for the regions, the Cantons are not evenly developed or endowed in a financial point of view.

Social and economic inequalities are far to enable sustainability, so that we are allowed to question the sustainable development dimension of the NPR. A dimension that is part of the Swiss Constitution since 1999. However, if the sustainable development considers traditionally the economy, the environment and the society, this study will above all take into account the economic and social dimension. Regional policy has a particular impact on these two dimension, whereas the environmental part is considered by other public policies as the land use policy (LAT) or the nature protection policy (LPN).

This study proposes to treat the actual regional policy as well as the future NPR as an assessment. For this purpose, an analysis grid will be constructed, which will refer to the concept of the knowledge-based economy and the functional economy.