Abstract
Territorial cohesion has figured in the lexicon of the European Union for some years. However, there has never been a clear definition of the notion, not even after its inclusion in the Lisbon Treaty. Moreover, within the European Union Cohesion Reports and, more generally, within European Union documents, along with the other two dimensions of cohesion (economic and social) it has been treated separately without any serious attempts to reconcile them and develop a coherent interpretation of cohesion—the result being the creation of a contested and ill-defined understanding of territorial cohesion and its relationship to the other two dimensions of Cohesion Policy. Given that the approach advocated by Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy aims to embed the different dimensions and how they interact in specific spatial configurations (created by the confluence of a range of different ‘flows’ that can create multiple overlapping assemblages with ‘fuzzy’ boundaries), this raises important questions about how we understand these relationships. Moreover, the policy discourses in which each dimension of cohesion is situated create their own frameworks that are conducive to developing the conditions, including appropriate policy strategies, to supporting these individual cohesion formations. The rather arbitrary separation of these approaches in ‘official discourse’ impedes addressing cohesion in a coherent and integrated manner. Thus, after reviewing the relevant key policy literature, the article will seek to consider how territorial cohesion relates to the other two dimensions of cohesion taking into account the role of the place-based approach. However, it is argued that the search for territorial (social and economic) cohesion has been subordinated to neoliberal notions such as competitiveness and economic growth.
Highlights
A number of key notions have played a key role in the official discourse of and debates around cohesion in the European Union over the last three decades
Territorial cohesion remained the ‘poor relation’ of the three in the sense that it lay outside the competence of the European Union because it was not included in the Treaty Establishing the European Community
The European Union debate has tried to bring together the different dimensions of territorial cohesion and to internalise the spatial consequences of economic and social cohesion through different discursive constructs: One of those is the identification of specific spatial configurations, which can create the conditions for their integration in practice
Summary
A number of key notions have played a key role in the official discourse of and debates around cohesion in the European Union over the last three decades. The Green Paper (Commission of the European Communities, 2008) and the associated place-based approach represented a significant step forward in the development of an approach that sought to bring together the territorial, social and economic dimensions, arguing that they cannot be considered in isolation and that, as a result, policies must be developed in an integrated manner and directed at ‘meaningful places of intervention’ (i.e., not limited by administrative boundaries/borders). This approach has become central to territorial Cohesion Policy as articulated through European Union Cohesion Policy, presenting a way of bringing together economic, social and territorial cohesion in specific places and building a more territorially cohesive and economically balanced European space. This means there will inevitably be ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ and that this process runs the risk of intensifying territorial inequalities at pan-European, national and regional levels (cf. Atkinson, 2017, 2019)
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