PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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sustainability is necessarily both intergenerational as well as overarching concept. As the
report notes in its “Conclusions and Recommendations” section in the beginning
(Commission of the European Communities 2001e):
Efforts to raise productivity and promote growth for one generation must not,
however, be at the expense of the next. In other words, the development path followed
must also be a sustainable one, a general point which needs to be reflected in all
investment decisions.
[Emphasis in the original.]
Optimistically speaking, one might discern here the first mainstreaming effects of
the EU’s new Sustainable Development Strategy, at least as far as rhetorical commitment
is concerned. In the end, however, sustainability is indisputably only the most recent
addition to the EU canon of Leitbilder. Both enlargement and integration are to be
achieved in a “sustainable” manner, but this mandate remains operationally weak. For
example, so far, the Maastricht sustainability mandate has not succeeded in bringing
about the demanded shift towards funding for more environmentally friendly modes of
transport. It is true, for example, that 9 out of the EU’s 14 TEN priority projects
(described below) were high-speed rail projects and that over 60% (827 out of 1344
million ECU) from the TEN special budget line went towards rail. But as figure 6.1
indicates, the vast majority of transport spending under the more sizeable EU Cohesion
and EDRF Funds went towards roads, tipping the overall balance about two-thirds in
favor of roads and highways.