EU Cohesion Policy and Digital Public Services

This paper investigates the impact of European Cohesion Funds on the digitalization of local governments in Italy, using the quality of municipal websites as a proxy for e-government capacity. Using web scraping techniques and a generalized Difference-in-Differences approach, the study examines whether municipalities that received targeted EU funding for digital networks and services experienced improvements in website technological sophistication. The results show that cohesion funds have contributed to the adoption of modern web standards, particularly HTML5, and to the simplification of website structure, indicating progress in the core aspects of digital infrastructure. These effects are especially pronounced in smaller municipalities and those located in the South and Inner Areas, suggesting that the cohesion policy can support digital convergence in structurally disadvantaged contexts. However, the absence of systematic improvements in broader dimensions of web interactivity points to the selective nature of these advancements.