After World War Two, the European Community was well aware of the radical differences between the various regions within Europe. Fearing that the regional differences could very much hurt the harmonious development of the entire community in the long run, the member states had intended a common regional policy as a possible remedy to correct the imbalances between developed and declining areas.

National schemes for regional aid in Europe differed because of the member states respective political conditions. In France, Paris being the center of the highly centralized administration, tightly supervised the regional development within the country. British also had a highly centralized, but more pragmatic administration dealing with this issue. German before 1969 allowed the eleven individual states to have responsibility over regional development issue. After that, the establishment of guidelines for regional economic policy had become a matter of joint responsibility.

Many obstacles challenged the very idea of a common regional policy for the European community. Individual nations cared primarily about their separate regional development rather than the well being of the whole community. They fiercely competed to outbid each other in their offers of aid as to attract investors to their own regions. Regional Fund proved to be an inflexible and weak financial instrument, sums involved were usually small. The absence of precise underlying criteria governing the distribution of financial resources between member states, such as the extent of assisted areas, the ratio between contributions and receipts, the size of the fund, inevitably hurt the movement. Official selection and manipulation of statistical indicators to define problem regions often created unfairness in the implementation of the policy as well.