Industrial policy is a highly controversial issue. It is justified because of existing market failures. The EU justifies its industrial policy on the grounds of common problems across countries, its capacity to coordinate and reduce duplication of efforts, its capacity to control and limit member State subsidies to industries, and its mandate for foreign trade and competition policy. Technology policy has been relatively successful in certain fields like telecommunications or traffic control systems. In other fields, like microelectronics and computers, the results have been mixed. Regional policy has had a limited developmental impact. Formulating a coherent industrial policy is a highly complicated venture since there is a number of conflicts that are hard to resolve. Cancelling industrial policy is no viable option due to political reasons. Industrial policy in Europe should aim at correcting market failures, particularly in the field of R&D and environmental damage, at strengthening specialized factors in industrial locations, and at managing industrial adjustment. While the EU Commission has an obvious role to play in the first and third field, it should leave locational policy to local and regional governments. This paper attempts to overview and to investigate the role, the evaluation and the effects of technological and industrial policies in EU. In addition, it will attempts to examine, and measure using a theoretical and an empirical approach and also to analyse the real socio-economic effects on convergence, cohesion of member states and on sustainable development.