Genesis and Conceptual Foundations of the Territorial Cohesion Policy of Regions in Ukraine (Problems of Definition of the Concept and Essence)

The review established that, despite a significant spread of the concept of territorial cohesion over the past twenty years in numerous documents of the European Commission relating to cohesion policy, the aspect of forming a single generally acceptable definition of the concept remains insufficiently disclosed. Based on the analysis of main conceptual foundations and practical aspects of the cohesion policy implementation in the EU countries, which are mostly disclosed in the documents of the European Commission, it has been established that the concept of territorial cohesion acquires different contents, evolving in response to challenges that arise during the emergence of crisis phenomena, that the EU member states are facing, as follows: the global financial and economic crisis, a migration crisis caused by the military aggression of the Russian Federation in Syria, as well as a crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the course of the analysis of the conceptual foundations of the territorial cohesion policy, it was revealed that results of scientific research made by European scientists confirm difficulties of forming a single generally acceptable definition for “territorial cohesion”. In the course of the research, the need to form a clear concept of territorial cohesion for the purposes of further research of the conceptual, theoretical and practical aspects of the formation of a policy of territorial cohesion is rationalized, therefore, within the framework of this goal, the author's interpretation of the concept of territorial cohesion is given.