EU TERRITORIAL COHESION & TERRITORIAL AGENDA : PRIORITIES AND ACTIVITIES OF THE BELGIAN PRESIDENCY (2 nd HALF OF 2010) Welcome speech by Ghislain GERON, Belgium, SPW Director General for Spatial Planning, Housing, Heritage and Energy ESPON 2013 Programme Internal Seminar Crossing Knowledge Frontiers Serving the Territories November 2010

Welcome in Liège! Palais des Congrès, 13 November 1993, seventeen years ago...

Liège 1993 Policy Note “For a Significant Step Towards Co-ordinated Planning Policy for Europe” 3.Clarification of the EU competency 2.ESDP Key points: 1. Widening the INTERREG geographic scope ?

Policy priorities of the EU Belgian Presidency Territorial Cohesion governance following Lisbon Treaty ratification: clarification is needed. Who shall do what? 3. Assist the coming Hungarian Presidency in revising the TAEU 2.Make the TAEU known among outsiders

Main activities (1)  1 st TA annual conference (TAAC), 28/29 September, Namur.  Make other decision-makers dialogue with NTCCP and contribute to TC/TA  Territorial impact of EU Transport Policy, its contribution to TC and EU2020  Policy coordination, governance mechanisms

Main activities (2)  Expert meeting, 8 October, Brussels:  Global Challenges in Polycentric Regions: what role for strategic spatial planning? Polycentric development in Flanders

Main activities (3)  Support to Spanish Presidency “Territory matters to make Europe 2020 a success” “[4] Therefore, we want to propose the reconsideration of governance mechanisms in order to secure better consistency between various sector policies with a territorial impact. Among these, not only budgetary, economic and employment policies (already mentioned in the EU2020 Communication) could be taken into account, but also transport, environ- mental, rural and energy policies.”

“Territory matters to make Europe 2020 a success” “[9] (...) it could be envisaged to bring TA and EU 2020 closer to each other by addressing various questions, in particular: the practical implications of the ‘place-based’ development approach advocated by the Barca report and the OECD as the ‘new paradigm of regional policy’; (...); the growing territorial interdependence between regions and the resulting need for territorial integration; (...); the four other types of interdependence identified by the Commission in its ‘Consultation on the future EU 2020 strategy’ (...), namely interdependence between Member States, between different levels of government, between different policies, and at the global level.”

Main activities (4)  Support to Hungarian Presidency Update TA/TSP:  “TA 2020” Discussed by NTCCP on 13 October What EU TC governance mechanisms? DG meeting on 30 November

Main activities (5)  Co-organisation with the ESPON CU of the ESPON 2013 Programme Internal Seminar Crossing Knowledge Frontiers Serving the Territories November 2010

Two reference documents we cannot ignore:

Enjoy the ESPON seminar and your stay in Liège !