European Spatial Planning Between Competitiveness and Territorial Cohesion: Shadows of Neo-liberalism

Abstract

This paper analyses the use of the concept of territorial cohesion in policy documents produced by the European Union. It is an idea celebrated in community documents, such as cohesion reports, the Territorial Agenda of the European Union and the Green Paper on Territorial Cohesion; after more than a decade of political debate, the concept is about to gain a legitimate institutional role, after being included in the Lisbon Treaty, and is among the competences that the EU shares with other member states. At first, territorial cohesion seems to oppose the logics of neo-liberalism by reinscribing welfare problems and policies in spatial terms. However, using the analytical framework of cultural critics, and intending cohesion to be a discourse carried on by a community of European scholars and policymakers, the research will discuss the conceptual relationship between competitiveness and territorial cohesion in European policies and narratives.

Notes

For a theoretical introduction to cultural political economic; see Ribera-Fumaz (2009); see also the works developed by the Cultural Political Economy Research Cluster at the University of Lancaster: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/ias/researchgroups/polecon (accessed June 2009).

The first appearance of the expression “territorial cohesion” dates back to 1997, in the Amsterdam Treaty, with reference to “services of general interests” (European Commission, 1997).

To be precise, the Lisbon Strategy (or to be exact, the outcome of the European Council meeting in 2000) aimed only to increase competitiveness, while the integration of the sustainable development objectives occurred with the so-called Goteborg Strategy (the outcome of the European Council meeting in 2001). Finally, in 2005, in a mid-term review, another update placed more centrality on the objectives of cohesion: see European Council (2000, 2001, 2005).

http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/consultation; see also the COPTA web site: http://www.eu-territorial-agenda.eu (accessed June 2009).

European Commission (2007a). Also known as the Reform Treaty, this is the document ideally substituting the European Constitution, failed after the French and Dutch referenda of 2005. The treaty would amend the Treaty on European Union (Maastricht) and the treaty establishing the European Community (Rome).

As stressed later in the paper, the scientific debate continues the discussion into more problematic areas; but considering, for example, the European Commission (2001a), or the European Council (2001), this narrow interpretation of cohesion is evident. Furthermore, later debates add conceptual meanings to territorial cohesion, but the convergence perspective is arguably still alive.

See also the metaphor of the “protector” and “mystical” knights developed by Doucet (2006), but above all, consider the inner idea of “evidence-based” policy (Faludi, 2007b).

Particularly since 1993, when Jacques Delors made a presentation to the leaders of the nations of the European Community, meeting in Copenhagen, on the growing problem of European unemployment, framing the question in terms of “lack of competitiveness” (Krugman, 1996).

Many critics argued that the Bologna Process may be read as a process of commodification of knowledge, education and research (Jacob, 2003).

At the same time, DG Regio has often asked the ESPON Network to develop territorial cohesion indicators in order to surpass the GDP limits (Dammers & Evers, 2008; Ferrugia & Gallina, 2008).