However, a European Spatial Development Perspective is not needed for this.

The European Spatial Development Perspective is a very good way to get discussions going but no more than that.

On 9 and 10 June 1997 in Noorwijk, during the Dutch presidency, this work produced a first official draft of the European Spatial Development Perspective.

Territorial cohesion is a European Union concept which builds on the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP).

In 1999, a document called the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) was signed by the ministers responsible for regional planning in the EU member states.

Andreas Faludi, Bas Waterhout, The Making of the European Spatial Development Perspective, London Routledge 2002.

However, we need to promote a genuine regional development policy. In this regard, I feel that the European spatial development perspective can serve as an important technical source of major integration and development.

We should reject any attempts to make structural and sectoral development policy in the Member States subordinate to key regions and central locations under a European Spatial Development Perspective.

I would also like to support this report wholeheartedly, as it contains some very good points and observations relating to the already ambitious Commission communication on a draft for a European Spatial Development Perspective.

Mr President, this own-initiative report on planning and the European Spatial Development Perspective is part of the work being carried out by the governments of the countries belonging to the Committee on Spatial Development.

The European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) is a document approved by the Informal Council of Ministers of Spatial Planning of European Commission in Potsdam in 1999.

Mr President, Commissioner, colleagues, I believe today's debate on both the EU's urban agenda and the report on regional planning and European spatial development perspective raises two very important and yet related dimensions of European regional policy.

In the context of the contemporary devolution processes and the growing application of the European Spatial Development Perspective in planning practice and policy in many European countries, ESPRID provides a range of online resources.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) is a document which, even though it depends simply on intergovernmental cooperation, aims to give a real political framework to Community, national and regional actions as regards regional planning.

However, it is essential for the strategy for coastal zones to constitute one of the first examples of implementation of the guidelines developed under the European Spatial Development Perspective, because the principles set out in it are obviously valuable for the Union' s coastal zones.

The European Spatial Development Perspective, a set of policies and strategies adopted by the European Union in 1999, is working to integrate the economies of the member regions, reduce economic disparities, and increase economic competitiveness (Faludi 2002; Deas and Lord 2006).

Furthermore, the work carried out under the European Spatial Development Perspective follows the development of the organisation of the European territory from a traditional, rather centralised model, towards a polycentric model which is the only way to promote a more balanced geographical distribution of work in Europe.

We are discussing a regional matter here, as presented in two reports which I think are two sides of the same problem: the one on planning and the European Spatial Development Perspective and the other, Mrs Napoletano's report, on urban policy for the European Union.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the draft European Spatial Development Perspective is an approach to planning matters which I consider limited, inasmuch as it places little importance on the problems of the human dimension of the occupation of land, that is to say, on its cultural and educational aspects and the question of social exclusion.