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Abstract
The territorial expansion of the European Union (EU) to the new central and eastern European member states raises difficult challenges for European spatial planning. In almost the same manner as structural policy, the conceptual side of European spatial planning has to acknowledge that with enlargement a quantum leap regarding its politics and policy is about to occur. While reflecting on discussions about EU's regional policy and spatial planning on the European level, and sketching a theoretical background, this paper proposes a new way of conceptualizing European spatial planning, taking central and eastern European spatial planning—perhaps as a new epistemic community—into consideration.
Notes
1. Poland Hungary Action Programme for Restructuring the Economy.
2. Central-Adriatic-Danube-Southeastern European Space.
3. Those options were discussed at a seminar organized by the EU Commission on the future management of the structural funds on 3–4 March 2003.
4. INTERREG funding is for example limited to strand IIIC which is fostering interregional cooperation.
5. The network's webpage can be found at http://www.espon.lu.
6. So far Czech Republic and Latvia have the status of Observer Countries by signing a memorandum of understanding.
7. On the development of the Blue Banana see Faludi and Waterhout Citation(2002).
8. Faludi displays a collection of widely-discussed conceptualizations and maps for the European space in the chapter “Images of Europe tell their own story” (Faludi, Citation2002b). The Boomerang, or something comparable concerning specifically the central and eastern European countries, is not part of it.
9. This was for example claimed by German planners in the statements by the German Academy for Regional Research and Development, Hanover (ARL, Citation1997), as well as by the German Council for Spatial Development.
10. As a coordinator of the Network of Spatial Research Institutions in Central and Eastern European Countries between 1997 and 2001, the author was involved in the preparation of the CEMAT document.
11. This link becomes obvious when looking at theoretical discussions focusing on enlargement (e.g. Schimmelfennig & Sedelmayer, Citation2002) and theory considerations as for European spatial planning (Faludi, Citation2002a; Faludi & Waterhout, Citation2002).
12. The divide in the neo-functionalist and inter-governmentalist debate, which represents a more traditional discussion in international relations theory, will not be emphasized in this paper. For a discussion of those two meta-theoretical approaches in relation to European spatial planning see Faludi Citation(2002b).
13. See section three of this paper.
14. Héritier's Citation(1999) study refers to the accession of Austria, Sweden and Finland to the EU.
15. Examples of western European networks are represented by the ESDP process and ESPON. As for the central and eastern European view, the Network of Spatial Research Institutions in Central and Eastern Europe is a prominent example.
16. On the concept of “mental geographies” see Hedetoft Citation(1999).