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four poorest member states (Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain) accounted for over 5
billion Ecu, of which 69% went to roads (see figure 6.2).
Enlargement in and of itself is increasingly used as a general justification for EU
financing for Pan-European infrastructure investments, but this general argument lacks
specificity. In order to gain a fuller understanding of the various rationales and
rationalizations for EU involvement in transport infrastructure financing in the context of
Eastern enlargement, it is therefore necessary to first trace in some detail the various,
contradictory spatial storylines that have been advanced to justify EU involvement in
transport infrastructure projects in the past.
6.3 Four Spatial Storylines For EU Transport Infrastructure Investments
6.3.1 Defining “Spatial Storylines”
The principal conceptual innovation of Maarten Hajer’s book The Politics of
Environmental Discourse consists in its focus on what he calls “storylines.” Hajer arrives
at this emphasis after a careful and critical review of Foucault’s theory of discourse,
which he finds wanting in one central aspect: “the role of the discoursing subject remains
ambivalent” (p.51). Well-aware that in the Foucaultian post-positivist worldview,
“discourse is not to be seen as a medium through which individuals can manipulate the
world,” but that it “is itself part of reality, and constitutes the discoursing subject,” and
that consequently, in this framework “interests cannot be taken as given a priori but are
constituted through discourse,” Hajer ultimately finds that “there is still a conceptual gap
between Foucault’s abstract work and the study of concrete political events,” which to
8 Objective 1 funding is designated for the least developed regions of the EU, i.e. regions where GDP per
capita is below 75% of the EU average.