1. Belgian Presidency Programme in the field of spatial planning and territorial cohesion

2. Three simple questions: How does Belgium work? What does Belgium want? (and how does it hope to achieve that?) What role does Belgium see for ESPON?

3. How does Belgium work? Flanders Wallonia Brussels

4. Belgian presidency is part of a trio together with Spain and Hungary Spatial planning and territorial cohesion are exclusive regional competences Belgian members of the ESPON Monitoring Committee: – BRUSSELS : Administration for Spatial Planning – FLANDERS : Department for Spatial Planning – WALLONIA : General Directorate for Spatial Planning

5. What does Belgium want? Foster the debate on Territorial Cohesion in the light of the ratified Lisbon Treaty Help with the Territorial Agenda process – Evaluation of the First Action Programme (AP1) – Contribute to the elaboration of the new Territorial Agenda and Territorial State and Perspective Report Reinforce the link between the Territorial Agenda and Sectoral Policies

6. How does Belgium hope to achieve this? 1.Support the Hungarian EU presidency for its Ministerial meeting on TA and TSP – Territorial Cohesion Contact Points (NTCCP) meeting – Director Generals in charge of the TA (DG) meeting 2.Support the ESPON activities 3.Organize the First Territorial Agenda Annual Conference 4.Promote exchanges of experience – Expert meeting on global challenges in polycentric regions. What role for strategic spatial planning? – High level seminar on spatial Planning Law in Europe

7. Agenda

8. What role does Belgium see for ESPON? ESPON European wide data can be used for a new Territorial Agenda and for national/regional positions = Applied research ESPON regional specific data can be used for regional (spatial) policy development = Targeted Analyses

9. Examples of interesting Targeted Analyses: Best Metropolis for Brussels Metroborder for Wallonia Territorial Performance Monitoring for Flanders Targeted Analysis in this call: AMCER has the Flemish administration as a stakeholder

10. Martijn De Bruijn Flemish government martijn.debruijn@rwo.vlaanderen.be