European Territorial Governance and its influence on spatial planning systems

The European Union (EU) does not hold any competence in the field of spatial planning. Nevertheless, through time it developed various spatially relevant concepts, initiatives and sectoral directives, an activity that became systematic since the inclusion of the economic and social cohesion objective in the Single European Act. This process led to the incremental consolidation of a European territorial governance framework that, in turn, induced relevant changes in the spatial planning systems of the member states through different conditionality mechanisms. The article draws on the results of the ESPON COMPASS research project to shed light on this process. It does so through the presentation and comparison of the perceived impacts that various sectoral directives, spatial policies and guidance documents developed at the EU level have produced on changes in the spatial planning systems of 32 European countries in the period 2000-2018. The analysis shows how these systems have been progressively embedded within a supranational territorial governance framework. However, they have not homogenised to any relevant extent, and changes have rather reflected the differential engagement of domestic institutional contexts towards EU processes and dynamics.