Studies in Political and Historical Geography Vol. 8 (2019): 183–206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18778/2300-0562.08.10 Robert Wieczorek Integration around regional development goals Discourse concerning the European Social Fund utilisation in Opolskie region Abstract: The article presents an analysis of the discourse of the European Social Found (ESF) component in Regional Operating Programme of Opolskie Voivodeship present in regional media. The paper shows multilevel institutional conditions for the regional ESF discourse that concerns the integration around regional development goals. Next, it includes an analysis of the EFS discourse in regional media. The comparison of regulations and regional media discourse shows important discrepancies between them, which becomes an argument for considering regional media discourse on ESF as somewhat independent from institutional regulations. The article also shows that the integration around regional development goals is not the main focal point in it and is not realised precisely in according to the external regulations. Keywords: regional development, European Social Found, Discourse Analysis, Opol- skie Voivodeship. Introduction For the discourse analysis of ESF utilisation in Opolskie region, it is important to place the region on a vertical scale of the European Union, the Republic of Poland and Opolskie Voivodeship. What analytically binds together those entities of diferent size is the institutional approach to the region. In this perspective, a region is seen in “the categories of relational links of space, institutions, regional population, and the symbols and myths generated in the public discourse” (Poniedziałek 2015: 85). In a region seen from this perspective, regional government is conditioned in defning its aims by larger-scale institutions such as the state and the European Union. In the case of Polish regions, these conditions are determined by the national legal system, as well as the European Regional Policy, European Cohesion Policy, and the European Social Fund. However, those top-down determinations are not applied automatically, but they are reshaped in the region. The reshaping