The Territorial Agenda 2030: Towards a common language? A review of a conceptual framework

Carolina Neto Henriques,Irina Gomes,Christine Auer,Sonja Dragović

doi:10.7163/eu21.2020.38.8

Abstract

The Territorial Agenda 2030 aims to provide multi-level strategic orientation to increase cohesion and overcome the 21st century pressing challenges. In multilingual contexts, the ideas and concepts communicated in such agendas must be clear and well-defined. In our study, we conducted a content analysis of the concepts of environment, inequality, justice, sustainability, territory and transition in contrast with former versions of this agenda. We found that, since 1983, the Territorial Agenda conceptual framework changed significantly in its meaning and semantic universe of reference.

Highlights

The Territorial Agenda (TA 2030; EU Ministers, 2020a) is a strategic policy framework jointly formulated by all European member states and some European Institutions
In order to achieve this aim, with political consensus from all actors involved on several levels of governance, as well as to foster commitment in its implementation, the the European Union (TA) 2030 takes into consideration several other policy frameworks and agendas, such as the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (UN, 2015), the New Leipzig Charter (EU Ministers, 2020b) and the European Green Deal (EC, 2019), among others (EU Ministers, 2020a, p. 3)
The goal to study contextual meaning and its evolution, reflects a hermeneutic conscience (Palmer, 1969, p. 323-338) without which we believe a read of a strategic political document would be incomplete from a social science lens. For this exercise we reviewed the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development; the United Nations’ Paris Agreement (2015); the European Commission’s 2020 European Green Deal; the European Commission’s 2020 Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing the Just Transition Fund, the EU Council’s New Leipzig Charter (2020); the United Nations’ New Urban Agenda (2017); the Council of the European Union’s Urban Agenda for the EU (2016) and the European Conference of Ministers responsible for Spatial/Regional Planning (CEMAT) Spatial Development Glossary (2007)

Summary

Introduction

The Territorial Agenda (TA 2030; EU Ministers, 2020a) is a strategic policy framework jointly formulated by all European member states and some European Institutions. The European territory, could be described as a palimpsest of different languages, cultures, religions and other significant identities (Uricchio, 2009) contributing to the imperative that is imposed on policy agendas such as the TA 2030, of creating or maintaining a common language (or at least a common semantic universe and conceptual framework of reference). This goal is unequivocally imperative for the agenda’s success, as its final version was just accepted by the ministers last December 1st, 2020, with the launch of six pilot actions. The methodology of content analysis employed in our study reflects our goal to inspect if the meaning of the abovementioned six words had suffered any changes across the former versions of the TA and its predecessor documents (Table 1)

Territorial Agenda of the Ministers responsible for spatial planning

Concepts Environment Inequality Justice Sustainability Territory Transition

Findings

Final considerations