The role of Inner Peripheries in the European Policy debate: a review

The concept of "Inner Peripheries" has been recently dabated in the European context. The binomial "peripherality-marginality", at the basis of this concept, associates the spatial location and poor accessibility to services, to the socio-economic dynamics. Negative demographic trends, social exclusion and economic decline in such areas may be dealt with European Cohesion and Rural Development Policies' funds aiming to improve the local welfare systems and to support the sustainable rural development. The present work aims to provide a preliminary evaluation of the consistency between Inner Peripheries concept coupled with Cohesion and Rural Development Policies as well as to check possible research gaps in current Academia debate, through a literature review exercise. Main findings reveal that Inner Peripheries concept associated with Cohesion Policymis a relatively new issue in the research field, especially at EU scale. Moreover, most review results describing the connection between Cohesion Policy and Inner Peripheries are mainly focused on the Italian National Strategy for Inner Areas. On the other hand, Rural Development Policy did not result directly related with peculiar common issues regarding Inner Peripheries. Finally, no document treating Policies related to Inner Peripheries was found, highlighting the need to bridge the research gap between EU Policies and Inner Peripheries.