The Future of the ESDP in the Framework of Territorial Cohesion

The message of this contribution is that now that the EU territorial cohesion policy has been formally recognized in the European Constitutional Treaty, the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) should evolve towards a discussion of common principles of EU territorial governance. The spatial vision that the ESDP represents appears to be no longer sufficient for European Community members to get a handle on the territorial cohesion policy. Indeed, the Community Strategic Guidelines on Cohesion (CSGC) proposed in the new Structural Funds regulations might incorporate such a task in future. Moreover, the experiences of European spatial planning, summed up here in four main regional perspectives, show that some common principles of EU territorial governance would be rather in the interest of not only Community institutions, but of all public authorities in Europe, who, whether they appreciate it or not, already participate in territorial cohesion policy and are progressively transformed by it.