Part B: REASONED JUSTIFICATION

I. Political Aims in Amending the Treaty

At the present moment as preparations are under way for the 1996 Intergovernmental Conference, the issue at the top of the agenda is a critical examination of the ramifications of the Maastricht Treaty (Maastricht-II debate). In this process attention has to be given to structural deficits and to the shortfalls in the actions for which it provides which have become apparent over the last few years; remedies will have to be sought in the form of amendments to the Treaty. The European Single Market and political upheavals in Central and Eastern Europe have shown that inter-regional developments in Europe can no longer be effectively steered solely from a regional or national perspective.

Among the foremost aims to be addressed in the review of the Maastricht Treaty are increasing cohesion within the Union, strengthening democracy and attaining greater transparency, achieving a better balance between institutions, bringing the EU and its citizens into closer contact, and increasing the EU's ability to undertake action both internally and externally. One central concern is that of improving opportunities for citizens, communes and regions to exert an influence on decision-making processes and to increase the efficiency of the EU by a process of institutional reforms. This is required to create the conditions for the desired enlargement of the Union by the accession of the states of Central and Eastern Europe1. In this process it will be vital to safeguard and to consolidate the diversity currently existing within and between the regions of Europe. In the view of the ARL working-party, regional planning policy needs to have a European dimension added on to it.

Decision-making processes in the EU right across the board must be made accessible and understandable to citizens. For this reason there is a need for a fundamental reform of the EU2, against the backdrop of the aims of "economic and social cohesion", "increasing efficiency" and "increasing opportunities for citizens, communes and regions to exert an influence", which would involve incorporating regional planning or spatial development policy within the Maastricht Treaty, and thus giving it the same kind of recognition currently enjoyed by the subsidiarity principle.

The ARL working-party is concerned particularly with clarifying the spatial development content, which to some extent has long been a component of EC/EU policy practice. It is only by incorporating spatial development policy within the Treaty itself that the Union's myriad aid programmes and directives (over 500) can be put to use in the interests of spatial development on a solid foundation of general principles and objectives which are capable of commanding a consensus, and can be coordinated in a future-orientated perspective with regard to their impact on the regions and on spatial development policy.

Consequently spatial development needs to become firmly established within the Treaty as a vital policy area, without this step leading to a diminution of national competencies. "Balanced Europe spatial development, however, also calls for the creation of close relations between EU Member States in the East and in the Mediterranean area"3.

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