The Future of Europe - Territorial Scenarios
Cooperation Is a Must, Not a Luxury
FUTURE PROOF – BLOG BY FUTURES PLATFORM
In recent times, an increasing number of people have given voice to thoughts and proposals for decreasing European integration or even returning to nationalism. This is despite evidence that disintegration has no winners in Europe. Today’s challenges cannot be solved by territories (be it countries or regions) individually; cooperation is needed. The necessity of European integration becomes clear when taking a territorial dimension, and seeing what various scenarios or visions for Europe mean for the development perspectives of regions and cities in Europe.
The number of EU Member States has grown considerably to today’s 28. The Single European Market, the Trans-European transport networks and other entities are constantly developing and political, social and cultural barriers are constantly being reduced.
Still, today there are more and more signs that the European integration processes could come to a halt or even be reversed. Brexit is the most prominent example. Discussions about financial support mechanisms for the losers of globalisation and the economic crises, about the joint handling of the refugee issue, joint police efforts – in other words, about solidarity in general in Europe – show that further European integration is challenged.
Territorial impacts of European disintegration
To understand what it means to challenge European integration, disintegration trends can be translated into increasing border effects and border obstacles. This can take different directions and increase border effects within Europe. This may, for example, imply increasing border waiting times at European internal and external borders and different degrees of enhanced political and cultural borders between countries in Europe.
To illustrate the effect of such disintegration trends, the ESPON study on possibility territorial futures has run a model. To model the direction of change of reduced European integration, two variants of an exploratory scenario were implemented, without and with increasing border effects.
Overall, disintegration in Europe would lead to reductions in economic growth in all regions. The model shows that GDP per capita would be lower everywhere compared with continued integration. In addition, the impacts of disintegration on territorial cohesion are negative.
Many of the lagging regions would face stronger reduction, i.e. falling behind compared to the European average. These are mostly regions in eastern and south-eastern Europe, though several regions in northern Europe would lose compared to the European average.
Most of the stronger regions would also lose out in absolute terms but gain in relative terms compared to the European average. This would be true particularly for most regions in Germany and middle and southern parts of Italy. Other countries such as Portugal, Spain, France and Austria would not change their position, so in other words, the cohesion effect would be neutral.
The policy debate about visions for Europe
In this light the debate about the future of an integrated Europe is not only about ideology and political will, but also about the future development perspectives for European countries, regions and cities and their citizens. The president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, delivered his state of the Union speech on the 13th of September 2017.
Prior to this, he and his team floated various papers about possible futures of the European Union, in terms of changing levels of European integration. For this purpose they developed five scenarios.
Territorial impacts of European visions
Each of the five scenarios concerning the future of the EU has different territorial implications and different consequences in terms of territorial cohesion. Only if these are considered thoroughly also to understand how a scenarios change the development prospects for countries, regions and cities.
While these territorial implications are neglected in the official debate, the following provides some quick hints on what this could look like:
In scenario 1 (carrying on), we probably see that the current territorial imbalances will remain for a foreseeable future and may even deepen as especially larger metropolitan areas thrive.
In scenario 2 (nothing but the single market), territorial diversity in Europe will flourish in terms of increasing disparities between Member States and most likely – at least in the less affluent Member States – also between regions. The increasing diversity and disparities concern economic, social and environmental situations.
In scenario 3 (those who want more do more), it seems that we will have a multi-speed Europe of different functional geographies. Most possibly with a core (with more integration in several EU policies) and fringes (accessing selected EU policies of their interest). Territorial disparities will grow between the core and the fringes and probably deepen considerably between regions in the fringes.
In scenario 4 (doing less more efficiently), we may see decreasing socio-economic divergence between EU Member States. Depending on national policies put in place, in some countries, regional disparities may increase while they decrease in others.
Last but not least, to a large degree, the territorial pattern of scenario 5 (doing much more together) may offer the prospect of increasing cohesion between Member States, accompanied by the risk of increasing disparities between regions.
Considering implications for economic, social and territorial cohesion is a must
The territorial balance within Europe and the development challenges and opportunities of regions and cities differ between the scenarios. Forthcoming discussions and policy debates on the future visions of Europe would benefit from including territorial impact assessments. To have a coherent debate on the future and to understand better the social and political dimensions of Europe, any vision for the EU needs to reflect both institutional and territorial futures.
Dr Kai Böhme is founder and director of Spatial Foresight, a private consultancy and independent think tank in the area of European territorial policies and research, with team members located in Luxembourg, Germany, France and Spain. Kai specialises in European regional and territorial research and policies, international comparative studies in the fields of regional development policies, spatial planning, and in the territorial impacts of sector policies. He has a truly European background and considerable experience in policy advice at the European and national level as well as in the management of international applied research and consultancy projects.
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