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This paper analyzes the interactions between EU policies and firms' restructuring programs. The starting point of this investigation is the need to clarify the definition of restructuring and to emphasize its multidimensional nature. The major characteristics of the notion of restructuring explain its existing interactions with policies of a diverse nature (industrial, fiscal, competitive, and external relations). For the EU, the challenges as well as the leverage tools available for meeting them, which are both institutional and substantial, are analyzed in light of the requirement for economic and social cohesion called for by the treaty.