Through grass roots studies conducted in three regions of France, this paper gives an account of the public partnership experiences with the use of the European Structural Fund (ESF) between 1994 and 1999. Published in the previous issue, Part I demonstrated that in practice, the partnership between regional prefectures, decentralized State administrations, and regional councils resulted in very different negotiation experiences from one regional scenario to another. Part II now looks at the interplay of tensions and competition that accompanied these experiences. It supports the theory that, far from contributing to the functional integration of public partnerships, the new distribution of powers imposed in 1990 more often than not served to stir up institutional rivalries and exacerbate conflicts on how the law should be interpreted.