PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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such alternative visions are then given political and institutional “teeth,” the actual impact
of such alternative discourses remains limited.
10.3.4 Opportunistic Reasons for Adopting “Sustainability” Criteria
When it comes to preserving and expanding their own decision-making powers,
local authorities in the European Union typically like to remind Eurocrats in Brussels of
the concept of subsidiarity which the EU has adopted as its fundamental governing
principle. However, parallel to the generally observed and much discussed Europeanwide
devolution of power in favor local and regional authorities, the EU has nevertheless
expanded its reach in several key areas of planning and decision-making. As we have
seen, the transport sector is one area where EU involvement in planning and policymaking
has been most noticeable during the last decade, with EU loans and grant funds
for Pan-European transport priority projects already running in the billions of Euros, and
with much more to follow in the near future. Not surprisingly, whenever they need to
attract Pan-European funds for locally important infrastructure projects, urban and
regional authorities’ criticism of Brussels’ supposed over-involvement in planning
matters turns into a much more cajoling attitude aimed at accessing EU coffers. In the
case of the Central European candidate countries, the EU’s opportunity to influence longterm
spatial development through the co-financing of key transport-infrastructures is even
greater insofar as those countries have much fewer financial resources themselves and a
much weaker bargaining position due to their applicant status. So in theory, the prospect
of Eastern enlargement provides current EU member states with a historic opportunity to
deeply shape both the rhetoric and the reality of transport and land use policy in CEE.