Reducing regional disparities is one of the main objectives of the European Union and one which is pursued through Cohesion policy aimed at strengthening economic, social and territorial cohesion across the EU.

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But in order to ensure the success of the policy, there is a need to measure both the extent of such disparities in social as well as economic terms and the effect to which the measures taken reduce them. This can be done using a scoreboard with multiple indicators.

However, a single headline indicator for social cohesion could ensure greater visibility. Such an indicator should apply to the regional as well as the national level and should be comparable across regions – ideally regions defined at the NUTS 2 level since this is the focus of the European Social Fund and European Regional Development Fund set up to finance measures for reducing regional disparities.

The European Commission is at present examining the possibility of constructing a regional inclusive society index which can be used for this purpose. Developing an index of this kind, however, is far from straightforward, since data are in many cases not readily available at regional level, especially at NUTS 2 level, for the aspects which it seems desirable to include, such as household income and the proportion of people with income below a minimum acceptable level, access to education, healthcare and other essential services of good quality or a safe and pollution-free environment. Moreover, once such data have been assembled, they need to be combined in an appropriate way to calculate a composite index.

This seminar examined

• the aspects to be included and the data availability,
• the methodology to be used for constructing a composite indicator.