PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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rhetoric, even within EU funding programs. 21 Rumford (2000:183), on the other hand,
makes a consistent argument that in the wake of neo-liberal policy-making in Europe, the
primary conceptualization of cohesion even “has become detached from its redistributive
origins and incorporated in a discourse of competitiveness and growth.” In the case of
transport infrastructure investments, investment-for-cohesion arguments attempting to
avoid the “competitiveness trap” are now most frequently put forth in conjunction with
calls for improved accessibility and for the “completion” of the TENs even in remote
regions. These aims are in conflict with neo-liberal macroeconomic efficiency
arguments, however, which would instead call for a greater differentiation of European
spaces based on specialized divisions of labor and regional competitiveness, and hence
for a subsequent concentration of resources in already competitive places. In the wake of
this line of argumentation, the emphasis of cohesion funding then shits from a focus on
peripheral, lagging regions within Cohesion countries (i.e. upgrading of rural roads and
general modernization of infrastructure inside an already underprivileged member state)
towards a modernization of key, national-level infrastructures so that these Cohesion
countries might be more competitive with regard to other EU member states. This
problem of these different geographical scales of under-privilege, and the related internal
inconsistency of the cohesion story-line, will come to haunt us once again when we take a
20 Note the reliance on expert opinion, which also makes this an exemplary statement for reflexive
modernization discourse. Also see Chapter 4.
21 For example, the Commission’s 1998 Social Action Programme asserts that:
The . . . programme's point of departure is that economic and social progress go hand in hand and that
the purpose of economic progress is to raise people's standard of living, against the background of a
balanced macro-economic strategy. Social policy should promote a decent quality of life and standard
of living for all in an active, inclusive and healthy society that encourages access to employment, good
working conditions and equality of opportunity. (CEC 1998, as quoted in Fainstein 2001:3).
There is a rapidly growing literature that uses the term cohesion in the sense of inclusiveness, stressing
issues such as social capital and governance. For an good overview of this literature, see Fainstein (2001).