This Dissertation explores the impact of the European Union's (EU) Cohesion Policy (and its structural and investment funds) on the transnationalization and subsequent transformation of state in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The Cohesion Policy is commonly known as a redistribution framework which transfers developmental aid from the West European core to the less developed periphery of South Europe and CEE through the EU budget. The dissertation explores the impact of this core-peripheral redistribution from a critical perspective in the Comparative Capitalism (CC) scholarship. More concretely, it focuses on the so-called Visegrád states - Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia - and their dependent market economies between the EU eastern enlargement in 2004 and the mid-2010s. This generates the first main contribution by bringing the EU structural funds into the CC debates on CEE which are mostly preoccupied with the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the transnationalization of Visegrád states. The contribution is impossible without historicizing the role of Cohesion Policy in shaping the EU historical core-peripheral relations since the late 1980s. Such a historization facilitates the second main contribution when examining how the post-2004 CEE integration transforms these...

La cohésion territoriale a fait son apparition dans le droit de l’Union à l’ex article 16 TCE aux côtés des SIEG. Elle a connu une consécration dans le droit primaire de l’Union avec son érection au rang d’objectif de l’Union européenne en devenant la troisième dimension de la politique de cohésion aux côtés de la cohésion économique et sociale. Cette nouvelle place dans le droit primaire n’est pas sans poser des questions sur la normativité de ce nouvel objectif et plus largement de sa place dans l’ordre juridique de l’Union. La principale difficulté réside aujourd’hui dans sa définition et ses modalités d’expression et d’intervention. Le Livre vert de la Commission européenne de 2008 consacré à la cohésion territoriale a eu le mérite de mettre l’objectif en perspective en lui donnant une concrétisation à travers essentiellement la politique régionale, mais également plus largement par la nécessaire coordination des politiques à impact territorial. Cette thèse a pour objectif de mettre en lumière les expressions de la cohésion territoriale, appelée à se développer avec la mise en œuvre du traité de Lisbonne. La cohésion territoriale peut également se fonder sur de nombreux autres principes juridiques, à l’image du principe de subsidiarité, pour se doter d’une normativité dans le droit matériel de l’Union, du travail législatif et réglementaire à la mise en œuvre des politiques sectorielles sur le territoire de l’Union. La cohésion territoriale peut enfin s’appuyer sur le droit institutionnel de l’Union et sur le rôle croissant des collectivités infraétatiques pour faire entendre la voie d’une solidarité territoriale dans le modèle d’intégration européenne. / The territorial cohesion appeared in the European Union law at the ex article 16 TCE beside the SIEG. It knew a consecration in the primary european Union law with its erection to the rank of objective of the European Union, becoming the third dimension of the cohesion policy beside the economic and social cohesion. This new place in the primary law is not without asking questions on the normativity of this new objective and more widely its place in the legal order of the european Union. The main difficulty is based on its definition and its modalities of expression and intervention today. The green Book of the European Commission of 2008 dedicated to the territorial cohesion had the merit to put the objective in perspective by giving it a realization through essentially the regional policy, but also more widely by the necessary coordination of the policies with territorial impact. This thesis has for objective to put in light the expressions of the territorial cohesion, called to develop with the application of the treaty of Lisbon. The territorial cohesion can also base itself on the other legal principles, just like the principle of subsidiarity, to build a normativity in the European Union material law, from the legislative and statutory work to the application of the sector-based policies on the European Union territory. The territorial cohesion can finally lean on the european Union institutional law and on the increasing role of the local gouvernment to make the way of a territorial solidarity taken in consideration in the model of the European integration.

The thesis Difficulties of the EU - Cohesion Policy Implementation System in the Czech Republic in the Programming period 2007-2013 deals with application of the theories of the European integration on two case studies. In the first part of the thesis the general history of the EU - structural policy is described. The second part is dedicated to the history of the structural policy in the Czech Republic. The third part is concerned with the theoretical definition of the topic and leads to a definition of the hypothesis and the research method. The main theoretical approach for the case studies is the multi-level governance theory, which describes multi-level sharing of authority among different types of actors. None of those actors has a power to define final version of the given policy. The case studies, which in detail examine the development and the efficiency of the implementation system of structural policy in Czech Republic, prove that this environment can cause the coordination dilemma connected with overuse of the free-riding tactics and high transaction costs. The combination of those elements leads to highly rigid system of implementation.

The thesis is dealing with development and evaluation of the Cross-Border Cooperation within the EU, as a part of the EU Cohesion policy, with Focus on the Czech Republic. The aim of the thesis is to evaluate the cross-border cooperation programmes in the Czech Republic from the applicants' and selected implementation structure subjects' point of view. These selected subjects are the Ministry for Regional Development of the CR, the Centre for Regional Development of the CR and administrative regions of the CR. The first part of the thesis refers to the history and development of the Cross-Border Cooperation within the EU and the CR and to the reasons which led to its establishment. The last part is focused on the description and the evaluation of applicants' and selected implementation structure subjects' experiences with cross-border cooperation programmes and their perception of the Cross-Border Cooperation in the CR. As a method for the evaluation of the cross-border cooperation programmes in the CR were used the following procedures: an analysis of the available publications and internet sources, interview with representatives of the Ministry for Regional Development of the CR and the Centre for Regional Development of the CR, and an inquiry via questionnaire among the administrative regions of the CR.