Southern Europe: reacting to the economic crisis: ESPON knowledge for decision makers

The current economic crisis in Europe is the inevitable result of an optimistic approach to economics, politics and the market in general. This approach based its competitiveness and employment opportunities on new technologies (cf. the Lisbon Strategy 2000) but, at the same time, it overlooked the continent’s financial performance. The ESPON 2013 projects based on place evidence resulted in thorough explanations of the current economic crisis in Europe in general and the Southern Macroregion in particular. These projects sought to support policy and decision makers in their adoption of cohesive and austerity measures by evaluating the possible political, economic, environmental and social impact on all the states, regions and cities involved. To this end, the ESPON projects made use of a platform that gathered comprehensive analyses, data, maps, tools and guidelines. The ESPON on the Road project is the result of a joint effort by France, Greece, Italy, Spain and Romania that aims to promote their territorial competitiveness. It demonstrated that levelling out disparity is a futile endeavour. Conversely, the place evidence approach showed that differences can become the basis to design multisector common strategies based on the Green and Blue economy. Planning and implementing general and sector-oriented integrated policies (e.g. Energy, Agriculture, Land-Sea Transport, etc.) that are linked to specific territorial contexts (e.g. coastal and mainland areas, large metropolises and small towns) become paramount for boosting growth and employment. This can be done by means of integrated investments and making sure cohesion founds are adequately spent so as to connect cohesion, aménagement du territoire, good governance and Institutional Best Practice.