European Union territorial governance

The term ‘EU territorial governance’ refers to the informal coordination process of national systems of territorial governance within the European Union (EU). While the EU has no legal competence in this area, this process is based on the objective of achieving ‘territorial cohesion’ and it has some impact on how territorial governance systems in Europe function and change. This impact derives from three kinds of influence, respectively driven by legal conditionality (stick), economic conditionality (carrot), and cognitive persuasion (sermon). Various combinations of structural influence (e.g., EU regulations in related policy areas), instrumental influence (e.g., targeted redistribution of resources) and discursive influence (e.g., promotion of key ideas and principles) interact with the territorial governance systems of the various countries. As a consequence, this process does not lead to convergence and uniformity, rather inducing differential changes in the different national systems that are the result of the specific nature of the latter.