TERRITORIAL POLICY OF THE EU STATES: TARGETS, TOOLS, ACHIEVEMENTS

Abstract

The article presents the process of formation and development of the territorial policy of the European Union and its Member States. The author defines the goals and logic of territorial and political transformation of national territorial and political systems in the context of glocalisation – macro-regional integration of national entities in Europe, where regions are proclaimed the main beneficiary of reforms, and place is proclaimed the topos, the basis of the political process. Place-based politics, development of self-government systems, decentralisation reforms, promotion of local and regional autonomy and systemic asymmetry, where status is determined by the scope of functional responsibilities, are considered as processes of de(re)construction of a new model of polycentric governance and political interaction in the context of formation of an effective supranational political space of the EU. The author examines the peculiarities of the transformation of systemic relations in the EU member states, including the relations between metropolises and non-European remote territories (on the example of France and the Netherlands), and the relations between the supranational centre of the EU and these remote territories of the EU states, which have the specifics of asymmetric involvement in the territorial and political processes of the EU. The author notes that the development of the EU political space is ahead of the process of transformation of the territorial morphology, which is manifested in the expansion of political participation rights at the supranational level and the preservation of restrictions at the national level. The paper notes that the EU’s spatial development strategy is formed on the basis of an institutional compromise between different levels of political decision-making in a multi-level and polycentric system of territorial and political relations and is provided by a set of instruments. This complex is formed by: the policy of vertical and horizontal cooperation; multilevel and polycentric governance; practices of regional and autonomy; asymmetry of statuses and functional roles; 4D decentralisation instruments; standardisation and measurement (indexation) of standards; instruments of consociative democracy, which provide for “inclusion policy”, “effective citizenship”, “mobile political participation” in the context of deepening integration, increasing mobility, and changing the functional significance of the institution of citizenship.