State Secretary Ministry of Environment Mr. Jesper W. Simonsen

Opportunities and Tasks of Spatial Development Policies at European, National and Regional Level

Joint Conference EU-Commission, Council of Europe and Federal Republic of Germany, Berlin, 28 April 1998

1. Introduction

Mr. Chairman, dear Colleagues. First I will take the opportunity to thank you for the invitation to be on this panel.

Norway is a member of the Council of Europe, and - as many of you might recall - we had the pleasure of hosting the European Conference of Ministers responsible for regional planning in Oslo in 1994. Although we have close relations with the European Union, through the European Economic Area, Norway’s official channel to European spatial development is through the Council of Europe and its work on Guiding principles for comprehensive and sustainable regional/-spatial planning in greater Europe in the next century. In addition we hope to participate in seminars and researcher networks on the ESDP, and develop our policy through participation in Interreg IIc-projects, as well as through co-operation between planning authorities in the Baltic Sea (VASAB).

The Government last year stated in its White paper on regional planning and land use policy that it will consider undertaking a national study in line with the principles of the ESDP. Such a national study might be divided into three regional studies, to ensure that the studies are in line with regional needs. The three studies should be under-taken by or in close co-operation with the three co-operation bodies of East, West and North-Norway. Shaping a Norwegian contribution to the ESDP through such an approach, would allow us to emphasise aspects of importance to us, for instance participation of local and regional elected bodies. In this way our national spatial development policy will consist of the three regional analyses, and the development of a national synthesis. This synthesis will be communicated through the Council of Europe, as a Norwegian supplement to the work on Guiding Principles.

As a final comment to the development of an ESDP for the wider Europe, I would like to give credit to the Council of Europe. By the Council of Europe’s involvement countries outside the EU can take part in the process, and both influence the ESDP and develop their own national policy on spatial development.

2. National experience

Let me now turn to how spatial planning and policy is working in Norway. This is our point of departure and illustrates important principles. Physical planning is under the competence of the locally elected authorities. The local plans are been supplemented by regional plans, developed by the elected regional authorities. But, to be honest, the regional plans rarely address spatial issues: The land use is decided by the municipalities and the economic resources are in the hands of various governmental bodies. Until recently, some of these bodies even had special laws enabling them to bypass the regular physical planning procedures at local and regional level, i.e. the national agricultural authorities, the energy authorities, the road construction authorities and the harbour authorities. Many of these govern-mental bodies have spatial objectives, but they are not sufficiently integrated in the comprehensive planning of the regional authorities.

These structures have been under change for some years, and we wish that the further development stresses the following elements:

1. Assessment of regional/ spatial impacts in sector policies.

2. The local, and especially the regional planning, is more and more developing into comprehensive cross sectoral planning, and sector laws are tuned to the Planning and Building Act. County planning should in the future be the basis for spatial development programmes, which will include important govern-mental resources meant for allocation in the county. We are working towards closer links between planning and allocation of means.

3. It is essential that regional plans include decisions on all vital activities in the county and that these are adopted by the County Council. This gives the elected councils at local and regional level the power to decide on all aspects of regional development and the approp-riate instruments.

4. If I add that we are working on enhancing public participation and sustainability through the local Agenda 21 process, then I can sum up that our focus is on Spat-ial development, Comprehensive cross sectoral integration, Democracy, Participation and Sustain-ability.

3. Level of decisions

The level of decisions should be the one embracing all impacts of the decisions. For this reason urban problems should be resolved in co-operation with the sur-round-ing suburban and rural areas. The role of the central government in this field is to decide the levels, to adopt national policy guidelines, to approve the county plans and to secure the overall regional balance, or in other words to fight depopulation of parts of the country.

4. Transnational co-operation

Let me now turn to the European level, co-operation in regions crossing national borders. In such regions, Norway will base its involvement on the existence of joint or parallel needs. The organisation of such co-operation should be in accordance with the problems to be resolved, but still stick to the principles of our national spatial policy. Let me mention some examples:

Interreg

Norway takes part in the Interreg programmes in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea region as well as cross border co-operation. In addition we participate in the Article 10-project «Northern Periphery».

The organisation of these programmes at the national level is focused on regional participation and respons-ibility. The elected regional representatives co-ordinate the Norwegian activity and they have the adopted county planning as their starting point when embarking on spatial development projects. Again, I will stress that such transnational regional co-operation should embrace not only cities or transport corridors, but also the surrounding regions.

The Barents Euro-Arctic region

Norway has taken an active part in organising international co-operation among the northernmost countries in Europe, the so called Barents Euro-Arctic Region. This region comprises the Nordic countries and North West Russia, but the European Commission has also acceded to the co-operation.

The Barents Region comprises most of the remaining unspoiled nature in Europe. It has unique wildlife, large and continuous natural habitats and high recreational qualities. Many of these values and qualities are threatened, especially in the Russian part of the Region, by a wide range of man made dangers, such as radioactive contamination and local air and marine pollution from insufficiently planned human settlements and heavy industries. Imbalance in social and economic development levels across the Barents Region adds to the challenges, and may cause continued aggravation of social and environmental problems through un-sustain-able exploitation of available resources. The need for better spatial planning is obvious. The first priority of our co-operation, both regionally and bilaterally, is to contribute to strengthening of the capacity of Russian authorities as well as their non-governmental counterparts. The Barents co-operation is for this reason based on co-operation at all levels; government to government, county to county as well as collaboration between companies and NGO’s.

The recent initiative by the Government of Finland to propose the development of a "Northern Dimension" in the policy of the European Union has been well taken by the Government of Norway. We are convinced that a wider European engagement and consciousness about the problems and needs of our adjacent areas is necessary to ensure stability and sustainable prosperity in the whole of Europe. But again I will stress that the approach must be comprehensive, and that focus must be on the need for environmental and social development and include all countries in the region.

5. Conclusion

To conclude, I will draw your attention to the aspects of Norwegian planning policies which we believe could be of interest in the European spatial development. By this I mean the emphasis on public participation and involvement of regionally elected authorities. On the other hand we feel that we have much to learn in developing coherent national policy guidelines for spatial planning.

Thank you for your attention.