Co-ordinating European sectoral policies against the background of European Spatial Development



Due to the multilevel governance in the European Union co-ordination in European spatial
development has to be accomplished through the process of negotiations between the
European Commission and the member states - even if the organisation of co-ordination is
initialised by the Commission itself. Particularly the involvement of member states is of great
importance. The reason is twofold. First, Community policies have increasing influence on
the spatial development of member states. After the recent EU-Enlargement the number of
states affected member states affected by EU policies has increased. Their participation in the
co-ordination process is of paramount importance; they must not be excluded from a co-
ordination strategy. Therefore, any such strategy should be agreed jointly between member
states and the Commission.

And second, member states have enormous knowledge about their specific spatial structures,
imbalances and territorial diversities. A forward-looking co-ordination strategy should in no
way ignore this tremendous potential.

Therefore organisational structures applied during the elaboration of the ESDP as the
Committee on Spatial Development (CSD) might be also appropriate for a concerted effort
for European spatial development. In this process a close communication and co-operation
between member states and the Commission has been realised. The expectations of all
involved actors were taken into consideration and the resulting perspective is jointly respected
both by the member states and the Commission.

The already mentioned study “Spatial Impacts of Community Policies and Costs of Non-
Coordination” (CEC 2001b, see above) made also several interesting recommendations for
better integration of the territorial dimension in Community policies. This possibilities have to
be analysed and further developed in order to identify their appropriateness for a forward-
looking co-ordination of sectoral policies in European spatial development.

A more “bottom up approach” could be the engagement of EU member states in terms of co-
ordinating sector policies’ impacts on spatial development in Europe. Among experts
currently the application of the so-called Open Method of Co-ordination (OMC) in this
political field in under discussion. In its White Paper on European Governance the European
Commission suggested the use of the OMC“ in order to complement or reinforce Community
actions. This method is used on a case by case basis and can be a way “of encouraging
cooperation, the exchange of best practices and agreeing common targets and guidelines for
member states“ (CEC 2001a, 21). OMC is being applied in policy fields in which the
European Commission has
no competence but where there is a reasonable prospect of

14



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