1. Analysis of regional planning systems in ProgreSDEC regions

For the goal of ProgreSDEC project, organising an exchange of experiences, methods and procedures for territorial planning and policies related to selected fields of the ESDP and new Territorial Agenda, a deeper look on the spatial planning system at regional level is necessarry. Of course, the 8 partner regions from four countries are character-ized by various planning and political concepts; nevertheless there are common ap-proaches regarding regional development. Looking shortly on the changes in regional approaches, development trends aroused and fostered by European policies can be no-ticed. This leads to the question how far there is a point of convergence between re-gional and European approaches.
2. Similarities and differences between the regional approaches

• Regional planning systems are strongly interdependent with national planning sys-tems: Path dependance of political and planning systems as well as institutions in the sense of rules, norms, traditions and cultural background are considerably im-portant.
• Thus, depending on the political system at national state level with the range from a centralistic approach as in Greece to a federal system as in Germany regional planning systems and their decision-making power differ.
• Moreover, within the countries it is remarkable that Metropolitan regions as Rome/Lazio or Thessaloniki/Central Macedonia seem to have more regional regu-lations and administrative power. Reasons for that could be the national impor-tance or the higher development pressure.
• But institutional aspects are important too for the capacity of regional planning systems: institutional thickness, commitment of regional stakeholders, active net-working and other informal issues influence the decision-making power at regional level.
• Regional planning systems in the analysed regions have a common problem with the “sandwich” position between national planning and policy, especially in more hierarchic states, on the one hand and the municipalities and their competencies, e.g. in urban planning, on the other hand. A similar situation arises in the relation-ship to sectoral policies, where the horizontal coordination task is hampered by low competencies and political support.
• Beside the problems of coordination amongst various decision-making institutions the regional planning approaches have to tackle with the multiplicity of control and forecasting instruments, the scarcity of financial resources, the complexity of the-matic issues, the conflictuality of involved interests and institutional political insta-bilities. Dealing with all these challenges it is getting important to harmonise me-dium- and long-term perspectives with the programming of short-term interven-tion measures and to foster co-operation amongst different parties and institu-tional levels with informal tools. Therefore, a trend to more project-orientated, in-tegrated and strategic step-by-step-approaches according to regional development processes can be noticed in some of the analysed regions.

3. European policy driven changes in regional approaches

• Generally, there is a growing significance of the regional level regarding planning and decision making in all four countries. This development is strongly connected with the requests of the European Union, especially in the field of structural funds. Furthermore, the region as major action level for programming European funds is becoming more and more important in coordinating sectoral policies.
• In all regions there have been recent changes regarding the planning approaches. In most cases these changes have been forced by European approaches in respect to structural funds, Interreg, LEADER or ESDP. On the one hand, these ap-proaches in the context of spatial planning are influencing the regional systems with new ideas and thematic aspects as sustainability, cohesion, balanced com-petitiveness, polycentrism, accessiblity, management of cultural heritage, know-legde, infrastructure or innovation. On the other hand, these approaches are insti-tutional modes as the subsidiarity and feedback principle, programming and evaluation, co-operation and participation or regional partnership models using working and discussion groups.
• Furthermore, European policies give legal requests as well as incentives as finan-cial benefits in structural funds, Interreg or LEADER. Looking at the requests there are regulations of different sectoral policies, which need to be applied on regional level by the planning systems. Especially for the environmental guidelines the re-gion is about to become the crucial arena for implementation.
• But as mentioned above, not only European policies are the driving forces of the changing regional planning systems. Lots of these developments are connected with the increasing needs of informal coordination and integrated strategies. Im-portant steps within this development have been the Agenda 21 - processes, of-fering thematic and processual innovations to regional planning systems.

4. Convergence between regional and European policies

Concluding the analysis of regional planning systems some answers can be given to the question, how far there is a point of convergence between regional and European ap-proaches.

• • First of all, there is a growing convergence between the various regional ap-proaches among themselves in spite of the differencies in national systems. This is surely an effect of the influential European policies – but other challenges, needs and approaches, e.g. Agenda 21 - processes have been important, too.
• • Obviously, convergence between regional and European planning approaches is growing as well. This convergence is fostered by requests, regulations and incen-tives of European policies, only sligthly in the field of spatial policy in the context of ESDP or Territorial Agenda, but more intensive in structural, environmental and other sectoral policies. Convergence takes place in a thematic dimension – al-though the special regional problems and challenges should always determine the spatial development objectives – as well as in an institutional dimension concerning coordination, co-operation, strategic management and governance principles.
• • The new approaches require an institutional change and often additional expendi-ture on the part of the regional planning systems. Thus, regions have to fulfill top-down-rules with only minor possibilities to influence the European policies within a bottom-up-process. But nevertheless the regions as new spatial focus have gained in significance for political and planning tasks. To sum up, European approaches take and give decision making power at the same time.
• • Positive effects of European approaches can be observed in the analysed regions. For instance there is a new integral understanding of the territory and its major challenges. Regional planning has gained relevance; decision-making processes are more territory-aware. Beside urban and regional planning certain policies, as European co-operation policy, rural development policy, environmental policy or transport policy have been clearly influenced by the new approaches.

All in all, new rather informal and integrated processes on regional level have been de-veloped facing Eurpean policies. These new forms of planning and implementing meas-ures for a strategic regional development can be summarised as “regional governance”. In this sense, despite all conflicts and problems European approaches as subsidiarity, regional partnership, co-operation and participation give the chance to support the re-gional development. How this chance is taken, is still left to the institutional systems on regional level.

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