Territorial cohesion and the European model of society: French perspectives

Jean Peyrony

Abstract: Cohesion as part of the European model of society, and in particular territorial cohesion as a spatial component of this model, have been introduced by French actors into the European debate. Therefore, if one wants to clarify these political concepts, and to analyze the policies supposed to implement them, it is useful to study their French roots, and the French policy of aménagement du territoire. The paper sketches the history of this policy. A first phase, since the 17th century, is implicit and linked to infrastructure supporting development; its theory has been defined by Saint Simon and elaborated through the notion of public services contributing to the cohesion of the Republic. The second phase, after World War II, which is explicit and builds on a compromise between efficiency and equity, can be read as a Rawlsian approach applied to space. At the European level, territorial cohesion progressively becomes a common reference, but as the main actors in cohesion policy remain national governments, EU intervention is questionable, and should rely more on coordination supported by the EU than on a new centralized policy. The paper glances at the different member states’ visions, and describes a possible way to combine EU and national policies in the French case.

About the author: Jean Peyrony (1961) is working in the DATAR (French national agency for spatial planning and regional development) where he is in charge of European territorial cooperation, and of policy design of the future EU cohesion policy. Before, he has been successively working asproject manager in public/private partnerships for urban development, and in the Paris region agency for spatial planning, where he took part in the writing of the regional plan, published in 1994.

Contact details:

DATAR

1 avenue Charles Floquet

F 75343 Paris Cedex 07

France

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Table of contents:

Introduction

Cohesion since the early beginnings

Territorial cohesion and public services

The birth of aménagement du territoire as a compromise between efficiency and equity

EU cohesion policy : towards territorial cohesion

The perception of territorial cohesion in the various national contexts

Back to France: what future for aménagement du territoire in combination with EU policies?

Conclusion

References

Introduction

Territorial cohesion, European spatial development perspective… Europeans now seem to have common concepts to be invoked in territorial development policies of various kinds. France has played a particular role in the history of these common concepts, obviously linked with its role in the European construction itself, particularly as regards cohesion policy. The reasons are probably to be found in French geography and history, those of an old and large country (as compared with its neighbors), characterized by its rather low density and geographic and socio-cultural diversity. In France, aménagement du territoire (the French name for these policies) is taught in secondary schools, within lessons of geography. All French schoolchildren have learned about the harmony of the French territoire, with its “natural borders” shaping a regular hexagon, mixing diversity into an unity guaranteed by the nation state.

The geographer J. Lévy, (Lévy, 1997), quotes a French elected member of the Regional Committee: “Europe is too much history, and not enough geography.” J. Lévy comments: “Although Europeans have had many joint histories (past history), to imagine a present voluntarily built on consensus is another history (story), that is to say inevitably and firstly a space being not only unique but, for the fist time, common. The construction of Europe consists of directly modifying (…) the relative disposition of its places: it is a geographic event.”

It is difficult, or even impossible, to define Europe by its borders (no natural borders at all, this time!), its physical or cultural identity. What unites Europe, says J. Lévy, is a community of problems: those posed by this immense mixing of populations in a space which is mostly open and welcoming to human settlement, and the obligation to respond by integrating these multiple identities within a single identity which incorporates them without deleting them. For this integration, each one of the present states (state being at present the most successful form of cohesion) developed its own proper method, emanating from its culture, religion, government tradition: for some, like France, the centralism of a 10-centuries-old state, for others, like Germany, the federation of a plurality of regions. These methods are varied, but have converged towards a common European model, the model of the democratic nation state. Since 1950, the European states try to take new steps towards unity, this time at continental level.

In this perspective the paper tries to sketch a rapid history of the concept of (economic, social and territorial) cohesion; then, as this concept seems to have French origins, the paper tells the story of aménagement du territoire in France, first implicitly through the building of large infrastructure networks and public services at the heart of Republican model; then, after 1950, explicitly through the development of a new policy, aiming at a compromise between efficiency and equity, which may find a philosophical basis in Rawls’ theory of justice, applied to spatial concerns.

Then the paper tries to elaborate on which type of territorial cohesion policy could be defined at EU level to implement the common concept. It makes a rapid survey of the perceptions of the concept in different member states, which is reflecting their historical and geographical diversity, and ends by coming back to France, to see how aménagement du territoire could be, in the future, more articulated with EU policies.

Cohesion since the early beginnings

In La cohésion sociale et territoriale, Donzel (2002) sketches a short history of cohesion throughout the centuries. In ancient Greece, social cohesion was linked to the political government of the City. Later, Christianity and modern progressives drew a distinction between society and the state. Philosophers of the Enlightenment tried to base the notion of political sovereignty on that of citizenship. The nascent social sciences reinforced the distinction between the political sphere and society, whereas for classical economy the market was the place where cohesion (or its opposite, non-cohesion) develops. Beckouche (2001), too, discusses the simultaneous development of the market and the nation state, the latter remaining even in the context of globalization the necessary counterweight to the market.

At the same time, the idea of European integrationappears. Thus, Napoleon already wanted to cohésionner l’Europe (make Europe cohesive), but obviously by the force of arms. In the declaration of 9/5/1950 launching the European construction, Robert Schuman whose origin was genuinely European (his father was from Lorraine, a French region which was German at the time of Schuman’s birth, and his mother was from Luxemburg), drew lessons from the failure of previous attempts to impose unity by force and proposed to European countries to join together bydeveloping “concrete solidarities” in two complementary perspectives:

economic development through a single market allowing free movement of people and goods

a new social and political community through cooperation, and no longer through domination.

For Jacques Delors (successively an adviser to the Gaullist Prime Minister Jacques Chaban- Delmas promoting “the new society” in the early 70s, then Socialist Finance Minister under François Mitterrand from 1981 to 1984), who as chairman of the European Commission from 1985 to 1995 explicitly introduced the notion of cohesion into the Treaty, cohesion is part of the European model of society, composed by four elements:

the market

the state, giving overall directions for development and correcting market failures

social bargaining, implementing objectives

the welfare state, guaranteeing minimum rights to citizens.

It is important to bear in mind that from the beginning the European construction has entailed a specific process, neither purely economic (the European Community is not simple a free trade area), nor purely political (it is not a new superstate either).

Territorial cohesion appears within this logic in 1997 in the Amsterdam Treaty in an article legitimating public intervention when the market does not ensure public services in certain areas. The Constitutional Treaty, if ratified, will give more weight to this notion, often presented, particularly by French politicians, to have its origins in French aménagement du territoire, a term that had better be left in the French original to avoid any misunderstanding. This is why it seems useful to have a look at the history of this policy in France.

Territorial cohesion and public services

In Les grands textes de l’aménagement du territoire et de la décentralisation, Alvergne and Musso (2003) show that historically there have been two French policies of aménagement du territoire, the first one implicit, centralized and Colbertist (after the Finance Minister of Louis XIV, Jean-Baptiste Colbert), the second explicit, decentralized and anti-Colbertist, which has really only developed after 1950. The French Revolution already expressed these two logics of aménagement du territoire and the organization of public authorities through the struggle between the Girondins (after the province of Gironde in the Southwest of France) and the Jacobins. The former were for decentralization, whereas the victorious Jacobins favored – and got – a centralized French Republic.

From the 17th to the 20th centuries all the important communication networks in France (roads, railways, post offices, telephone lines…) have been organized from Paris in a “hub and spokes” framework. The symbol of this is the étoile de Legrand - Legrand having been the French engineer (a Polytechnician and Saint Simonian, see below) who designed the national railway plan with Paris in its center (Guigou, 1993).

Significant players in this history during the 17th century have been Colbert (the Finance Minister of Louis XIV mentioned above) and Vauban, a military engineer who compared society to the human body. “One may say that the capital city is for its state what the heart is for the body.”Communications allow trade, thus ensuring that the “provinces can communicate their needs without satisfying them elsewhere…” Communications “facilitate circulation and the movement of money, as necessary to the political body as blood to the human body(…) It is for sure that all the provinces of this kingdom need each other, because all abound with certain goods and lack others”. So the existence of the state and the market are the twin conditions for national wealth.

At the beginning of the 19th century a major figure was Comte Claude Henri de Saint Simon (Musso, 1999; Boltanski and Thévenot, 1991). He took part with Lafayette in the American War of Independence, altogether spending four years in America, where he observed the new society. For him, America was a model of society. Young America was industrial, based on firms, whereas old Europe was feudal, based on warrior states. Back in Europe he studied hydraulics in the Netherlands and made plans for waterways in Spain. In 1790, he waived his noble title of Comte and became an entrepreneur. Then from 1798 onwards he devoted himself to philosophy, studying physics at the Ecole polytechnique (created during the French revolution to educate military and civil engineers) and physiology at the Ecole de Médecine. The analogy is clear. Engineers develop artificial networks for the circulation of trade, money and knowledge in the “social body”, whereas physicians cure networks for the circulation of blood in the human body (about the importance of spatial images or concepts as “frames” allowing people to construct problems, see Zonneveld in this set of papers). For Saint Simon who wanted to found a rational religion, a “new Christianity”, the aim was not only to promote industry, but the “universal association” of men called upon to become brothers. In 1813 before the Vienna Congress, he published De la réorganisation de la société européenne where he theorized a united Europe in the form of a confederation as the first step to a “universal association”. In Saint Simon’s view, the American Revolution should have helped to conclude the French one. Saint Simon was in search of a new social system, which he named the “industrial system” as opposed to the previous “feudal-military” system. Communication networks were supposed to facilitate the development of this new system through the circulation of ideas and wealth. The new society was to be egalitarian with the division of labor replacing social divisions. As the teacher of Auguste Comte (who for a while was his secretary) Saint-Simon was considered by Emile Durkheim as the father of sociology. He had a deep influence on Socialism (Proudhon and Marx himself) as well as on Napoleon III. Let us recall that Bonapartism is considered by Rémond (a specialist on French political history) as one of the historical roots of Gaullism (Rémond, 1982). Many industrialists and bankers as well as engineers have been influenced by Saint Simonand contributed significantly to establishing the French railway network, water companies, etc., etc. The Suez waterway, too, is a Saint Simonian idea. In Le système de la Méditerrannée, Chevalier, polytechnician and economic adviser of Napoleon III, put forward a development plan for the Mediterranean Basin based on communication networks so as to transform this area of conflict between East and West into the “wedding bed” of their union. Chevalier’s last activity was to study a project for a tunnel under the Channel.

So in the French context the delivery of services publics in the form of networks (roads, railways, telecommunications etc…) clearly appears to be an important condition for the generation of wealth as well as for social and territorial cohesion. The major operators of these networks are engineers, members of the corps d’Etat, elite corps and pillars of the French state educated in state-run institutions set up specifically for this purpose. For instance, the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées, created by Louis XV, has educated till nowadays engineers in charge of developing transport networks, thus structuring the territory.

In an issue of Informations sociales devoted to ‘Borders of public service’, Hastings (2003, p.26) profiles the French public service. He shows that the history of the public service is inextricably linked to the history of the Republic itself. The legitimacy of the State is rooted in the maintenance of a social contract based on solidarity and equality. In the 19th century, the industrial revolution seemed to endanger the internal cohesion of society. The state was progressively assimilated to the existing set of public services. The French Republican model links the social and the political. In 1927, the legal theorist Duguit said: “Public authority cannot be legitimated by its origin, but only by the services it delivers according to the law; thus the modern State appears more and more as a group of individuals working under the control of governments to provide for material and moral needs of participants; so the notion of public authority is replaced by public service; the state is no longer a ruling power, but a working group.” This is a very clear example of what Boltanski and Thévenot call the “civic-industrial compromise” (civic values being based on equality, and industrial values based on efficiency, the most representative of industrial values being those proposed by Saint Simon himself). Throughout the 20th century, social policies become an essential part of national identity. The two World Wars even reinforce this. The state is becoming the guarantor of universal social welfare. “Solidarism” is a general theory of social links under which the Republic supports social progress in an intermediate way between liberalism and socialism. Public service supports citizenship and equality. It is worth noting that the “great debate” launched in 1993 by Gaullist Minister Charles Pasqua to elaborate a new policy of aménagement du territoire exposes the risk of “territorial fracture” (the exact antonym of “territorial cohesion”) to legitimate this new policy.

The French vision of public service is threatened by growing unemployment and precariousness, decline of social authorities, technological changes, globalization, deregulation, the growing importance of EU normsand regulations. According to Hastings ”equity is substituted for equality, social justice for solidarity, individual dignity for citizen rights as principles of public action. The French Republican model seems to be endangered.” However, others like Bauby (2003) think that this model may survive through a European version of the “social market economy” and by means of “services of general interest” promoting social and territorial cohesion. In a paper published in Le Figaro, quoted by Husson (2002, p.122), the Gaullist Michel Barnier, at that time French ministry of European affairs (since then European Commissioner in charge of regional policy from 1999 to 2004) comments upon the introduction of territorial cohesion into the Amsterdam Treaty in these terms: “Public services, or services of general economic interest in the communautarian jargon, are an essential element of social and territorial cohesion in Europe. Equality of treatment and access for all citizens to essential services, quality and continuity of service, harmonious planning without territories lagging behind, preservation of long term interests; all these dimensions are to be taken into account in fields like transport, energy, water, telecommunications, or postal communications.” Another representative of this French determination to preserve public services by building a common European vision is Philippe Herzog (polytechnician, economist, and a former member of the Communist Party), who as Member of the European Parliament was the author of a major report about services of general economic interest.

The birth of aménagement du territoire as a compromise between efficiency and equity

After the 2nd world war, France faced reconstruction; the Commissariat général au Plan was created in 1946 to plan the modernization of the country, which was still mostly rural at that time; the first Commissaire was Jean Monnet, who was to instill the idea of European construction into Schuman. The approach of the French Plan was mostly sectoral, but in 1962, the French Plan was “regionalized”, and Datar (Délégation à l’aménagement du territoire et à l’action régionale) was created by President Charles de Gaulle in 1963. In parallel, a process of decentralization was progressively launched, leading to the laws of 1982, which, in particular, created the regions as local authorities.