Drawing out the Elements of Territorial Cohesion: Re-scaling EU Spatial Governance

Abstract

With the entering into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, Article 3 of the Treaty on European Union requires the Union to ‘promote economic, social and territorial cohesion, and solidarity among Member States’. This adds ‘territorial cohesion’ to its economic and social forms, legally entrenching a concept that has been steadily gaining momentum and legitimacy in European policy circles for many years even despite the Commission's frank admission in its Green Paper of late 2008 that it was unable to define it. 1 Perhaps it is territorial cohesion's uncertain character that explains its considerable success in legislative and policy terms, being so easy to sign up to and providing opportunities for local and regional interpretations based on specific historical and cultural characteristics. 2 Certainly, one simple (and relatively uncontroversial) understanding of territorial cohesion is that it means ‘incorporating a spatial planning perspective into decisions that are now made primarily on economic and social grounds’, 3 an understanding that places the concept firmly within the EU's pantheon of integrated policy and decision-making. An alternative, and reductionist, approach to the concept, advanced recently by the Commission, is the lessening of ‘territorial concentrations of EU-27 GDP in the traditional core of Europe’. 4 Linking the idea of spatial awareness with solidarity, territorial cohesion has, more controversially, been interpreted as introducing a far-reaching interpretation of territorial cohesion as ‘spatial justice’ predicated on an (apparently unitary 5 ) European social model. 6 The most up-to-date version of the goal of the concept is ‘to encourage the harmonious and sustainable development of all territories by building on their territorial characteristics and resources’. 7