PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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A Cohesion Fund set up by the Council … shall provide a financial contribution to
projects in the fields of environment and trans-European networks in the area of
transport infrastructure.
Eligibility under the Cohesion Fund was always determined according to national
economic criteria based on GDP performance, so the future of Cohesion Fund assistance
to Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain is threatened by the prospects of Eastern
enlargement. A complex deal was struck in Agenda 2000 by the member governments to
ensure the continuation of both cohesion and enlargement funding from 2000 to 2006.
Allen (2000:264) provides a realist, intergovernmentalist interpretation for the deal.
Bordering on outright cynicism, he notes:
This bargain was probably possible because the structural funds have rather less to do
with real economic cohesion or the eradication of regional disparities than to do with a
modest budgetary redistribution to facilitate the continued development and smooth
running of the EU.
Nevertheless, the official rationale for funding transport infrastructures in the
context of cohesion was the idea that better infrastructure endowment would
automatically make these lagging, often peripherally located, regions more competitive
within the EU territory. That this investment-for-cohesion storyline clearly misrepresents
and oversimplifies the complex effects of transport infrastructure investments on regional
development has already partially been demonstrated during the general discussion over
the relationship between transport and economic development in chapter 2. The
following paragraphs will further elaborate on the contestability of the notion,
concentrating more specifically on the political background of the cohesion storyline. 14
14 Note that the assumption of a straight correlation between transport investment and economic
development is also contradictory to the ambitions of the EU’s new Sustainable Development Strategy,
which explicitly aims at decoupling transport growth from GDP growth.