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Abstract: The German achievement was to get the ‘Leipzig Principles’ accepted and to pilot the ESDP through its final stages. Equally important was the successful German initiative to turn the ESDP into an intergovernmental exercise of formulating a framework from below. In this, Germans federal planners followed the predilections of the German Länder. At the same time, their involvement in European planning gave federal planning the position of a linchpin between the Länder and the European Commission. Other Member States followed Germany in its opposition to a strong role for the Commission in planning. The danger is that, now that the ESDP is on the books, the Commission may sideline Member States and embark on spatial planning based entirely on its own competencies.
This paper draws amongst others in a forthcoming book, co-authored with Bas Waterhout, ‘No Masterplan: The Making of the European Spatial Development Perspective.’
Introduction
It was under a German Presidency that the so-called Leipzig Principles have been adopted in 1994. These have been constituent for the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP). (European Commission 1999a) And it was under the next German Presidency in 1999 that the ESDP received the final nod from planning ministers of the Member states and the Commissioner for Regional Policy. Perhaps equally important, without Germany, European spatial planning would be grafted onto ‘cohesion policy’ giving financial support to less-favored regions according to criteria decided at Brussels. As things are, Germany has set the ESDP process on its present intergovernmental course, with Member States rather than the European Commission formulating policy. In so doing, together with other Member States, Germany has also injected the sustainablility agenda into the proceedings. To explain why Germany has taken this course, a closer look at German planning is in order.
Because this has been a condition of acceptance into the fold of West European nations, support for European integration is a German article of faith written into the Constitution, or Basic Law. However, where European spatial planning is concerned, the German preference has originally been for operating through the Council of Europe rather than the European Community. In the late 1980s, like elsewhere, the Single Market Program, with the prospect of intensified Europe-wide competition in its wake, gave planners pause to consider the impact of Community policies on the German competitive position. (Sinz, Steinle 1989)
In analyzing German policy, it is always necessary to also take account of German federalism. In addition, the concept of planning is important. After these preliminaries the focus is on the position of federal planning after the momentous German event of the late-twentieth century, unification. Against this backdrop the constructive but complex German attitude towards European spatial planning becomes more transparent.
German federalism
The Länder are more like states than regions, with constitutions, parliaments and governments of their own. With the exception of foreign policy and defense, federal policy is formulated and implemented jointly with the Länder, this being called the ‘counter-current principle.’ Also, other than with US States, by being represented in the Upper House of Parliament, the Bundesrat, or Federal Council, it is the governments (and not any elected Senators) that participate on behalf of the Länder in federal policy-making. This has given rise to what is called ‘co-operative federalism.’ (Jeffrey 1999)
European integration puts strain on the system of checks and balances. Its essence is that it shifts competencies, including those of the Länder, to the European Community. Now, the federal government participates in Intergovernmental Conferences setting the ground rules and in the Council of Ministers approving initiatives as regards Community legislation. The Länder, as against this, have to rely for the representation of their interests on the federal government. So, even though they have a say in federal policy, including policy towards Europe, and even though every amendment to the European treaties requires their consent, the Länder are the losers. (Benz 1998, 111)
In all this, the reader needs to appreciate that, in terms of its population of 18 million, the largest of the Länder, Northrhine-Westphalia, would be the sixth-largest EU Member State after Spain, but before The Netherlands. For an entity of this weight, the lack of a voice in Brussels is problematic.
Admittedly, the Länder are represented on a Committee of the Regions set up under the Treaty of Maastricht in the early 1990s. Also, Länder ministers can now represent Member States at the Council of Ministers, but this is less than the Länder aspire to, a real voice. To make thing worse, the European Commission interferes with regional policy, which is a joint task of the federal government and the Länder. (Drerup 1997, 337) Thus, the Commission has successfully challenged financial support for regional development, affecting both the extent of funding as well as the delineation of its target areas, making both conform to its competition and structural policies. (Schrumpf 1997, 247) So, understandably, the Länder are weary of the Commission role in regional policy, an attitude shared by federal policy makers. (Teitsch 1999, 105) More generally speaking, they are keen on seeing the Community competencies being defined with less leeway for extensive interpretation. Indeed, it has been on their insistence that another Intergovernmental Conference to deal with this issue has had to be scheduled for 2004. (Hüttmann, Knodt 2000)
The planning tradition
Although governed by a Federal Building Code, local planning is largely about zoning and a municipal responsibility, although subject to state supervision. Above the local level, planning is going by an altogether different name, Raumordnung (literally speaking spatial ordering). Within federal framework legislation (European Commission 1999b), each of the Länder passes its own legislation. This leads to a variety of arrangements. Indeed, such overall planning as there is takes place in and by the Länder. The plans that this results in are meant to bring order into development by means of coordinating public works and the like. In this sense, spatial planning is a "…policy cross-section function." (Schrumpf 1997, 246) Needless to say that this leads to conflict between planners and the makers of so-called ‘sector policies’ being endemic. Claims on land are also coordinated is by Länder authorities reviewing local plans prior to their approval, thereby checking whether they fit into a broader pattern as reflected in a regional and/or state-wide statutory planning document. Of course, this, too, can be contentious.
With the exception of small grants to stimulate good practices and the like, spatial planning has no direct way of bringing development about. Development is either privately funded, or the funds comes from other sectors of government. So German spatial planning relies for its effectiveness on the force of the law. Development is expected to conform to local plans, and local plans to conform to higher-order plans. Public works are also expected to fall in line. So basically German spatial planning is regulatory.
Federal planning
At federal level, there is no plan, and so federal planning is not thought of as planning proper. Federal planners have an, albeit limited role even so. Much business is conducted through a Standing Conference of Ministers responsible for Regional Planning, comprising sixteen Länder ministers and the federal minister responsible for planning. The conference is known by its German acronym as MKRO.
Federal planners keep tabs on overall spatial development and represent Germany in the European arena. Apart from general concerns with the impact of Community policies, including the Single Market Program, involvement in European planning has been stimulated by an unexpected and dramatic event, German unification. Indeed, for "…few western states did the end of the Cold War imply so drastic a revolution in the geopolitical situation as for the Federal Republic of Germany." (Dijking 1996, 17) Upon joining the Federal Republic (and thus the European Community), the former German Democratic Republic was divided into five new Länder with the same rights and responsibilities as the old ones. At the same time, unification set migratory movements into motion, giving extra urgency to the need for improving living conditions in the east. This demanded planning like never before, with infrastructure requirements that speak to the imagination. (Drerup 1997, 339)
The immediate response was a ‘quick and dirty’ study by the federal planners called ‘Spatial Planning Concept for the Development of the New Länder.’ (Federal Ministry for Regional Planning, Building and Urban Development 1992). Based on economic and employment data, available infrastructure and their geographic positions, the planners designated twelve higher-order centers and their hinterland as the ‘development engines’ of the new Länder. (Selke 1991) The wider picture was not being lost sight of either. The new Länder were expected to develop into Central European hubs. The recommendations took the form of a ‘guiding framework’ rather than as a fixed planning scheme.
This was the first experience of federal planners with formulating an informal guiding framework. However, still in the process of building up their administrations, the new Länder had been no party to formulating it. Objections against the designating a select few regional development centers came particularly from rural areas "…afraid of loosing assistance in favor of an enforced development policy in for a few central places." (Sinz1994, 19)
The response marked the second stage in the development of post-unification planning. In 1993, so-called ‘Guidelines for Regional Policy’ were formulated, but this time under the umbrella of the MKRO. For the MKRO to adopt such an, albeit non-statutory document was a first. Guiding principles are called Leitbilder in German; a term often translated as spatial vision. Leitbild stands for an informal instrument "…that describes, verbally and/or non-verbally, a desirable future of a region." (Knieling 2000, 7; translation AF) Five Leitbilder, or sets of principles were put forward. They were about settlement structures, environment and land use, transport planning, Europe and a set of generic principles.
Naturally, the set to be discussed here concerns Europe. Here the Germans stressed their position in the heartland of a continent that was rapidly becoming one. Germany was portrayed as "…a new interface between western and eastern Europe and between northern and southern Europe." (Federal Ministry for Regional Planning, Building and Urban Development 1993, 19)
By that time, the European Commission had already published the study that has been germane to the development of European spatial planning called ‘Europe 2000’ (European Commission 1991) and was in the process of formulating the follow-up, ‘Europe 2000+.’ (European Commission 1994) The ‘Guidelines for Regional Policy’ spelled out the German response. Accepting that the European treaties gave the Community specific competencies to intervene in spatial development, the Germans argued that things should be left at that. "Endeavours to lay down comprehensive rules and codes for regional policy at the European level must be rejected. Instead, the European regional policy concept must support the multifarious forces in the individual national and regions, promoting and coordinating cooperation between them at the same time. What we need is not a new super-planning concept on a European scale but the flexible further development of the various forms of coordination." (Federal Ministry for Regional Planning, Building and Urban Development 1993, 20) This reflected the German ‘counter-current principle.’
The Guidelines went on to specify the goals that a European framework should pursue, beginning with a balanced, polycentric settlement structure. (The ESDP, too, would advocate polycentric development.) The list included support for urban networks, but also for the Community policy of promoting trans-European networks. Realization of these goals depended, not only on national sector policies, but also on measures taken by the European Commission. To co-ordinate such measures, what was needed was an overall European spatial vision (Leitbild) but not a comprehensive planning policy.
A linchpin
Against this backdrop it is clear why Germans federal planners, whilst being for a form of European planning, were alarmed by the prospect of the Commission entering the fray. They were opposed to a European masterplan because this would give Community regional policy, already considered by the Länder as intrusive, another string to its bow and interfere with Länder prerogatives in the field of spatial planning to boot. At the same time, the experiences of the post-unification period had shown opportunities for joint planning of a voluntary nature, and that the position of Germany in the heartland of Europe required co-operation with Germany’s neighbors. Last but not least, their involvement in European planning would give federal planners the position of a linchpin between the Länder and Brussels. However, they held that, under the counter-current principle, the European spatial vision or perspective needed as a basis for coordinating Community policies should be formulated bottom-up, by the Member States, and not top-down, from Brussels. In European jargon, this is what describing spatial planning as ‘intergovernmental’ means: Member States (and in the German situation the Länder, represented as they were on the MKRO) having the ultimate say over formulating a framework, and with this also over the application of Community policies within their territories.
German federal planners have been singularly successful in winning other Member states over to this position. Even the Dutch and the French, originally in tune with the kind of planning that the Commission was embarking on, bought the idea of intergovernmental planning, even at the expense of planning remained an informal business. The early 1990s were simply inauspicious times for new Community policy to be introduced. So this is how the ESDP became what it is, an informal document of the Member States, admittedly prepared in close co-operation with the relevant Directorate-General of the European Commission. Undoubtedly, as a result of this bottom-up approach, the ESDP carries more commitment than would otherwise have been the case. However, the set-up is not without internal contradictions. The relation with relevant Community policies is unclear. German proposals made in the framework of the 1996 Intergovernmental Conference prior to the Treaty of Amsterdam to make it mandatory for Community policies to fall into line with the ESDP (Faludi 1997) have fallen onto deaf ears. (Selke 1999) Also, and even though the ESDP is an intergovernmental document, the European Commission has played an active role in preparing it, so much so that it is safe to claim that without the Commission the ESDP would not have come to pass. However, now the Commission seems to be sidelining intergovernmental planning and, under the title of ‘integrated territorial management’ (European Commission 2000) and/or ‘territorial cohesion’ (European Commission 2001), to be heading towards a new form of European spatial planning entirely within its own competencies.
References
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Author and Copyright Information
Copyright 2001 by Author
Andreas Faludi is a Professor of Spatial Policy Systems in Europe at the University of Nijmegen. Previously, he held chairs at the University of Amsterdam and at Delft University of Technology and a teaching appointment at the Oxford Polytechnic(now Oxford Brookes University). He was a British Council Scholar, an Australian-European Fellow, a Fulbright Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, a Fellow of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study and an EU Fulbright Scholar at Harvard University. His books include: 'A Reader in Planning Theory' (1973); 'Planning Theory' (1973); 'Flexibility and Commitment in Planning ' (co-authored, 1983), 'Critical Rationalism and Planning Methodology' (1986), 'A Decision-centred View of Environmental Planning' (1987; Italian translation 2000), 'Rule and Order: Dutch Planning Doctrine in the Twentieth Century' (co-authored, 1994). A co-authored book ‘No Masterplan! — The Making of the European Spatial Development Perspective’ is in preparation.
Andreas Faludi, Dipl.-Ing. Dr.techn.
Professor of Spatial Policy Systems in Europe
School of Management
University of Nijmegen
P.O.Box 9108
6500 HK Nijmegen
The Netherlands
Tel: +31-(0)24-3613048
Fax: +31-(0)24-3611481
E-mail: a.faludi@net.HCC.nl
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