EUKN - European Urban Knowledge Network - Territorial cohesion: unleashing the territorial potential

Territorial cohesion: unleashing the territorial potential

Introduction

The European Union has an incredibly rich territorial diversity. Territorial cohesion is about ensuring a balanced development of all these places and about making sure that our citizens are able to make the most of inherent features of their territories – to transform diversity into an asset that contributes to sustainable development of the entire EU. The Lisbon Treaty states that the EU shall promote economic, social and territorial cohesion, and solidarity among Member States. With the 2008 Green Paper on Territorial Cohesion, the Commission launched a public debate around the different dimensions of territorial cohesion. Almost 400 contributions were received in response to the consultation, providing 'food for thought' on how to improve present practices and develop new policy options.

Description

A new background document has been published to serve as a basis for discussions at a conference on "Cohesion Policy and Territorial Development". Organised by the Swedish Presidency, the conference is taking place in Kiruna in the north of Sweden on 10-11 December 2009. The document gives an overview of the almost 400 contributions received in response to the consultation on the European Commission's Green Paper on territorial cohesion held from Oct 2008 to Feb 2009, and provides a basis for the discussion on the future cohesion policy.

The document summarises the reflections of key stakeholders in four main areas: (1) cooperation between territories for bolstering European integration; (2) fostering liveable urban and rural communities; (3) coordination of policies to achieve greater policy coherence; and (4) analysis and data collection for evidence-based policy making.

Background information

The present background document is a contribution from the Directorate- General for Regional Policy to the Conference on Cohesion Policy and Territorial Development: Make Use of the Territorial Potential! organised in Kiruna, December 10-11, 2009 by the Swedish EU presidency. It is intended as an input to the workshop on Territorial potentials for European regions and tools for further development.

Conclusions

The public debate launched by the Green Paper on territorial cohesion and the consequent discussions organised by DG Regional Policy have been extremely rich.

On territorial cooperation, there is a need to apply an integrated approach to territorial development at the scale of functional cooperation areas, ranging from cross border agglomerations to macro-regions. For such a cooperation to function well, horizontal and vertical co-ordination issues need to be tackled. This involves not only an alignment of regulations, but also of local, regional, national and European strategies (through coordinated planning), as well as funding. It also requires adapted monitoring systems, and multi-level governance.

There is also a need to enhance EU wide networking on thematic as well as territorial issues. EU support through cooperation programmes is needed to improve strategy,coordination, facilitation, monitoring, capitalisation and transfer of experience. It is also important to find a balance between bottom-up and top-down approaches, between
strategic focus and adaptation to different territorial contexts. The three strands of cooperation (cross border, transnational, interregional) are not questioned, but some projects may have difficulty in finding their way through existing programmes, raising the question of greater flexibility.

On the urban and rural dimension, as well as urban-rural linkages, discussions underlined the need for cohesion policy to foster liveable urban and rural communities within a framework based on a Local Development Methodology (LDM) model, building on the experience of Community based initiatives such as URBAN and LEADER. As regards integrated urban development, the current period has seen the mainstreaming of the urban dimension. However, a number of weaknesses have been identified in the current system that future instruments for assisting urban development will need to address.

The cohesion policy allocation to the development of rural areas far exceeds the allocation of what is commonly known as wider rural development under the CAP. Key issues are how to better valorise what is currently being done by Cohesion Policy, as well as how to achieve better complementarity and synergy with EAFRD. The debate on urban-rural linkages has identified a need for better coordination of funds and possibilities to assist urban-rural partnerships at the level of functional areas.

One of the main messages emerging from the Green Paper consultation was the need for better coordination of public policies to maximise synergies and to avoid possible conflicts on the ground. This calls for better analysis and understanding of the territorial impacts of policies, together with an improvement of existing strategic coordination tools. This could be done by intensifying inter-service work on the territorial dimension and impacts of EU policies using a solid evidence base (e.g. ESPON, general as well as targeted sectoral ex-ante and ex-post impact assessments, etc.), considering common or better coordinated strategic guidelines or regulations, etc.

Better policies also rely on a solid knowledge base on territorial development across the EU. The European Commission is extending the scope of its regional and urban statistics, as has been demonstrated above. However the role of the MS must not be underestimated, especially regarding impact assessments and data collection.

Publication date

10/12/2009

Project finished

11/12/2009

Researcher

European Commission

Links

Click here to download the article 'Territorial cohesion: unleashing the territorial potential'Click here to visit the website of the Kiruna conference Click here to visit the website of DG Regio

Document type

research

Themes

Urban Policy

Keywords