Beyond a development perspective: EU territorial governance and the future of European spatial planning

Born in the cradle of social and economic cohesion Community principle twelve years ago, the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) has contributed to the institutional recognition of the territorial dimension of cohesion. Territorial cohesion is now included among the “Union’s objectives” at Art. I-3 in the, although not ratified yet, new Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. The implementation of territorial cohesion policy is a matter of good EU territorial governance, an aim that the ESDP also embraces. Despite these clear convergences and a widespread conviction that the ESDP should be now updated, the proposed delivery system for cohesion policy after 2006 would rather indicate that such interesting experience is arrived at the terminus. If so, the informal Council of EU Ministers responsible for spatial planning, far from risking to remain at the border of Community cohesion policy, should better orientate the efforts towards the agreement on principles of good EU territorial governance. Indeed, the experiences of European spatial planning, summed up here in four main regional perspectives, show that a development perspective to refer to appears no longer sufficient for planning authorities in Europe to manage the complexity of territorial cohesion policy. In particular, principles of vertical and horizontal subsidiarity in planning, as well as of coordination between subsidiarity and cohesion, would be the minimum requirements as to coordinate national planning systems in the scope of EU territorial cohesion policy