Europe 2020 is the EU’s strategy for recovery. The Lisbon Agenda was adopted ten years ago by the 15 EU countries. It sought to make Europe the world’s leading knowledge economy by 2010. It failed. It’s easier to talk the talk than walk the walk.

So are we back to the drawing board? Yes, except the world, and Europe within it, are now different places. A decade back the world fretted about the whether the clocks striking midnight on New Year’s Eve would render all our computers impotent. Gleeful Greeks and smiling Spaniards polished their shiny new Euros and looked at a reflection of economic stability. Here in the UK budget concerns were about overtime payments to get the Millennium Dome completed on time: ‘Which millennium, gov’? This one! You must be joking. I’ll see what I can do, but it’ll cost you.’

Today, China, India, Brazil and Russia loom large on the competitiveness landscape. Global emissions and climate change cause sleepless nights. A decade of low births and longer lives has cast a demographic shadow over a palsied Europe. Energy spikes, food security, security from terrorist attacks (security security?), hazards, risk management, and the small matter of a banking crisis converted into a crisis of investment in public services… feel free to add your own phobias to the list. But ‘Don’t panic!!’. The EU has a strategy.

That strategy is Europe 2020. It takes over where the Lisbon Agenda left off, but with the jobs and growth gains of the past decade wiped out. EU GDP fell 4% in 2009. Industrial production is back at 1990s level. Unemployment accounts of 10% of the active population. As Europe 2020 observes, ‘Many investment plans, talents and ideas risk going to waste because of uncertainties, sluggish demand and lack of funding.’

Smart, sustainable and inclusive growth

How to turn Europe round? The Europe 2020 ten year recovery strategy is based on three priorities:

• Smart growth – ‘an economy based on knowledge and innovation’;
• Sustainable growth – ‘a more resource efficient, greener and more competitive economy’;
• Inclusive growth - ‘a high-employment economy delivering economic, social and territorial cohesion’.

So ‘smart growth’ is a re-tread version of the Lisbon agenda. ‘Sustainable growth’ is a repeat of the Gothenburg Agenda, which added a sustainable development angle to the Lisbon agenda. And ‘inclusive growth’? That reiterates the EU’s cohesion policy, with ‘territorial cohesion’ added since it is now part of the Lisbon Treaty. Spatial planners and ESPON followers can give two cheers for this. After all, the Lisbon Agenda ignored the territorial dimension. Planners’ expectations had been raised with the adoption of the European Spatial Development Perspective in 1999. The Lisbon Agenda the following year marked the decisive turn away from flirtations with any notion that Europe needed a spatial strategy, or that there was any need to better integrate the burgeoning wave of new Directives from the various sectoral bureaucracies in Brussels.

Territorial cohesion and Europe 2020

So if territorial cohesion is now part of the recovery strategy, why only two cheers and not three? This was the focus for a lively debate at the ESPON seminar in Spain. The ‘glass is half full’ school was well represented by Philippe Monfort from DG Regio. He noted that there are several references to territories and the role of regions in Europe 2020. More fundamentally, ownership is stressed: the strategy can only work through implementation at regional and local level. The general principles of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth need to be put into practice through being tuned to a specific territorial context. The importance of governance is also recognised. ‘To get out of the trouble we are in, we have to be together – as member states, as EU policy makers and between governments and stakeholders, so there is an important role for regions and local authorities’, said Mr.Monfort. He stressed that DG Regio has worked hard to defend the regional approach to development as one that adds value and through integration of policies is better than sectoral policy-making in silos. ‘We really had to defend these ideas, and were grateful for support from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development when many saw only national governments as the means to implement EU policies.’ Mr.Monfort believed that through translating the generalities of Europe 2020 into regional objectives, the territorial approach could prove its value.

Philippe Ducet, speaking on behalf of the up-coming Belgian Presidency of the EU, was less sanguine. He referred to the document agreed on 10 May by the Director Generals of ministerial departments responsible for territorial development policy. Getting approval of Territory matters to make Europe2020 a success had not been easy. Yes, territory is mentioned several times in Europe 2020, but the mentions are incidental. Section 4 on ‘Exit from the crisis’ fails to grasp the territorial issues. Mr.Ducet pointed the finger at flawed EU governance for the failure of the Lisbon Strategy. Now there is a clear EU competence for territorial cohesion there should be no excuses any more (lack of legal competence was a significant factor in the EU distancing itself from ‘spatial planning’). ‘We should make a strong case about the inter-dependence of regions. Make everyone aware that territorial action is needed, often for trans-national regions that need to be treated as a single entity for area development’.

Not surprisingly, Andrea Forti from the Committee of the Regions was happy to sign up to this line. He argued that Europe 2020 needs a stronger territorial dimension, not only to compensate and support weaker regions, but because even in rich regions there are under-utilised resources that can be mobilised by a territorial development approach. ‘If that does not happen, the Europe 2020 strategy will fail’, he warned, adding that ‘If that happens the territorial disparities in Europe will widen’. Not surprisingly, given that he is from the Committee of the Regions, he welcomed statements in the strategy document saying that regional and local authorities have a role as partners in delivery of the strategy. However, the lack of specific explanation of this role left him with a feeling that it amounted to no more than lip service. The seven ‘Flagship Initiatives’ in Europe 2020 are one of the main differences between it and the Lisbon Agenda. But they amount to little more than umbrella concepts (‘An industrial policy for the globalisation era’, ‘Youth on the move’ etc), and fail to grasp or explain how regional and local authorities could be drivers and implementers. ‘Cohesion policy and Europe 2020 need to be mutually reinforcing’ he concluded.

Mutuality was less the concern of Joost van Iersel, from the European Economic and Social Committee. He felt that Europe 2020 was weak where it needed to be strong – on the role of the cities and city regions in building Europe’s economic future. ‘It is now recognised that large urban areas are the attractors of talent, and the focus for investment in a world that is not very friendly. They also contain the 21st century challenges – energy conservation, pollution, criminality. They are the laboratories of the world economy. Therefore the cities and regions need to be enabled to be the facilitators for Europe2020’s flagships’ he argued.

‘We need a high level group on metropolitan areas, our spearheads for jobs and growth’ he said. ‘The group would lead debate and link the European Council and the European Commission to the regional and local authorities. Let’s integrate the regions into Europe 2020 – make it a way of connecting top-down and bottom-up approaches to development and recovery.’ While he did not directly challenge Andrea Forti’s line of argument, it was clear that Mr.van Iersel favoured a policy that strongly prioritised urban and metropolitan regions.

Michael Parkinson from Liverpool John Moores University, and leader of a new ESPON project on second cities, spoke of his fear that ‘place-based policies are slipping off the agenda’. If that happens, the gap between the capital cities and the second tier of cities will widen, he warned. ‘Europe 2020 is silent on these issues. We are at a critical moment: miss it and it will be gone. Europe needs a Cities 2020’.

For Cliff Hague’s assessment of the possible territorial impacts of Europe2020 see his blog on www.innovationcircle.net.

1st Photo courtesy of the ESPON Coordination Unit

2nd Photo: D. Quijote & S. Panza, in front of Cervantes' natal house, in Alcala de Henares, Spain. By K Gracie 

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Author:

ESPON UK Contact Point

Publisher:

The Royal Town Planning Institute

Date:

15-Jun-10

Categories:

Espon 

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