Hungarian Efforts to Mainstream Territorial Cohesion in Development Policy: Signs of Europeanisation of Domestic Spatial Planning

Abstract

The paper analyses the Hungarian efforts towards the approach of territorial cohesion from a spatial planning perspective. Since 2009 territorial cohesion is not only a new legitimate priority of the EU policies, especially that of Cohesion Policy, but also an important impetus of European spatial planning and thus the key driving force of the Europeanisation process of domestic spatial planning of member states. Although Hungary, just like the other Eastern and Central European Member States, had not had a significant role for a long time before 2011 in the elaboration and discourse of territorial cohesion and European spatial planning, some of its related policy innovations had a pioneer character in the European scale. In 2011, Hungarian took a coordinator role in the preparation of the definitive strategic document of the European spatial planning and territorial cohesion, that is, the Territorial Agenda 2020 (TA2020). The paper collects and reviews the main Hungarian policy initiatives, which directly connect to notion of territorial cohesion in a European understanding of spatial planning and development. Early formation of legislative framework for the EU oriented regional development in the 1990s; the emerging approaches in national level spatial planning, spatial strategies, and the pioneer introduction of integrated urban development strategies and methodological innovations of development system to implement territorial cohesion are the main steps in this process. Several relevant Hungarian innovations emerged during or even before the explicit EU level discussion and political acceptance of territorial cohesion.