A vision for Europe – Three starting assumptions

To engage in the conceptualisation of a Vision for Europe is an intriguing task that I accepted with great pleasure, as I consider visioning a crucial activity to conceptualising key guiding principles that shall serve as action catalysts. At the same time, the task is also daunting, as any vision concerning the future of Europe cannot escape the critical situation that the European continent is sailing through since at least 15 years. Since the end of the 2010s, the European countries and the supranational institutional framework that they have been struggling to develop throughout the second half of the 1900 have been subjected to multiple crisis, from the global financial crisis to the increasing migration pressure, from the resurgence of nationalist Eurosceptic parties to Brexit, from the pandemic outburst to the explosion of conflicts right at the European Union (EU) borders. The positive attitude towards integration that characterised the end of the previous century had allowed the unfolding of a process leading to the definition of a shared European Spatial Development Perspective (CEC, 1999, Faludi and Waterhout, 2002) and the consolidation of economic, social and territorial cohesion as the cornerstone of the European model of society (Faludi, 2007). The sequence of crises that had unfolded since, on the contrary, not only make it hard to vision how the future will or shall unfold, it even raises questions on the actual meaning of any visioning activity when key actors seem mostly concerned with national interests and unlikely to join forces in pursuance of a joint vision. Acknowledging the above, I argue that any vision rising from rather crumbling foundations shall be developed around a number of assumptions, that point the direction to hopefully overcome these troubled times. As such, I structured this text around the three starting assumptions that I consider crucial to visioning, if the future of Europe is something that we will still want to discuss decades from now. • The first assumption is that to discuss the future of Europe makes sense only if the process of European integration is once again put at the centre of the picture. The latter constitute a precondition without which nationalistic fragmentation are likely to prevail, in so doing making any visioning exercise concerning the future of Europe scarcely meaningful. • The second assumption concerns the goal that should be pursued by European actors through this integration, that is a transition towards a greener development model that at the same time maintains social and spatial justice at the heart. • The third assumption concerns the means to achieve this goal, that is the progressive ‘softening’ of spatial planning activities, from their incardination into rigid administrative containers to the adoption of functional logics and geographies.