PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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During the High-Level Meeting in Brussels, March 2000, Guy Crauser, then
Director General for Regional Policy at the Commission, delivered a speech which was
supposed to clarify the aims of structural and cohesion funding in Member states and
their relationship to pre-accession funding to the applicant countries. The ISPA-relevant
excerpts from this speech are also well-worth considering in detail. Turning to ISPA,
Crauser began by saying the following (Crauser 2000):
As you all know, ISPA will be a major new source of investment in the transport and
environment sectors. ISPA is not an environmental or a transport policy
instrument. ISPA has been designed as a precursor of the Cohesion and Structural
Funds. It is hence part of the family of financial support instruments for economic
and social cohesion. ISPA's principal aim is therefore to lay the foundations for
the future Structural Funds by providing the authorities here with the experience of
managing large-scale strategic investments in partnership with the Commission. This
experience will be invaluable when the time comes to manage larger and more
complex investment programmes supported by the Structural Funds. (Emphasis
added.)
Just a few moments later, however, we find the following remarks:
ISPA's aims are ambitious: it will support major investments which make a real
difference to the transport system and to the quality of the environment … I
understand that there has been some confusion as to the scope of the different
instruments. ISPA is a precursor of an economic and social cohesion support
mechanism but not an instrument of regional policy and not an instrument for
rural development. ISPA beneficiaries are entire countries with their whole territory.
ISPA is targeted to the trans-European transport corridors and to investment into
the environmental acquis. (Emphasis added.)
In the end, Crauser himself did little to end the confusion over ISPA, but rather
exacerbated it. How can an instrument not be a transport policy instrument when it is
explicitly aiming to make a difference in the recipient’s transport system by targeting
Trans-European transport corridors? How can an instrument not be a regional policy
instrument when it is a) being administered by the Directorate General for Regional
Policy and b) considered to be part of “a family of instruments for economic and social