PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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sustainability” in the widest sense: openness, participation, accountability, effectiveness
and coherence. The White Paper rarely uses the terms “sustainable” or “sustainability,”
however, and these references always links back to the Sustainable Development
Strategy. Yet there is one passage on policy coherence which makes direct reference to
transport and land use questions, emphasizing the need for enhanced dialogue between
different levels of government (p.13):
The territorial impacts of EU policies in areas such as transport, energy or
environment should be addressed. These policies should form part of a coherent
whole as stated in the EU’s second cohesion report; there is a need to avoid a logic
which is too sector-specific. In the same way, decisions taken at regional and local
levels should be coherent with a broader set of principles that would underpin more
sustainable and balanced territorial development within the Union.
Sustainability is thus also seen as having a strong institutional dimension.
5.2.8 EU Input to the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development
The EU released several papers in preparation of the UN World Summit on
Sustainable Development in Johannesburg (August 24 th
– September 4 th 2002). A
special webpage documenting the EU’s input and involvement in the WSSD
(http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/wssd/index_en.html) was created presenting the
by-now typical, massive onslaught of downloadable related EU speeches, press releases,
fact sheets, reports, glossy brochures and other background materials, including the SDS
itself. Two Commission Communications summarize the EU’s approach to the WSSD.
Both are extremely broad in their agendas. The transport sector receives numerous
mentions in both documents, but neither one assigns an especially privileged role to the
sector. 7
This is not surprising in light of the fact that the WSSD agenda itself does not
7 The first Communication, released in February 2001 (Commission of the European Communities 2001o),
sets out four broad strategic objectives (“increased global equity and an effective partnership;” “better