Cohesion and subsidiarity: towards good territorial governance in Europe

The message of this paper is twofold: (a) the pursuit of territorial cohesion, the importance of which the new European Constitution recognises, requires coordination of national planning systems; and (b) subsidiarity, a Community principle usually invoked to counteract it, should instead become the principle underlying a feasible and effective form of such coordination at the EU (European Union) level. Indeed, the Constitution should at least encourage planners to discuss principles of good EU territorial governance by addressing the performance of statutory planning systems in the common area of territorial cohesion. In brief, these principles might be termed vertical subsidiarity, horizontal subsidiarity, and the coordination between subsidiarity and cohesion.