Various institutions of the Union at local, regional,
national and supranational levels, with ever increasing
frequency and emphasis, have devised policies and initiated
mechanisms, which are best, represented by the concept of
governance. The Union, while formulating common policy
in limited areas, has accepted the principle of subsidiarity
in many others, encouraging collaborative schemes
and approaches among various actors at different
sub-national levels. Major instruments for implementation
like the Social fund and Regional and Cohesion
Fund envisage and encourage a new societal division of
labour, new types of collaboration among a multiplicity of
stakeholders and new forms of participation and
accountability, true to the spirit of governance.All these
developments and trends justify a course in which
this concept and its various applications within the
European Union are taken up systematically, to
facilitate a clearer understanding of how the Union
functions.
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