Questions of territorial governance will be important in the next phase of the European project. The overarching objective of the European Commission’s Green Deal will require models of territorial development that bring together stakeholders across governance levels. To deliver the transformations required as part of the Green Deal investments to reduce emissions and decouple economic growth from resource use, strategies will need to be implemented at a range of scales. To ensure that investments from the Sustainable Europe Investment Plan (SEIP) and Just Transition Mechanism (JTM) create the desired impact, it will be essential for states to ensure institutional capacity to coordinate stakeholders.

This policy brief draws on the findings of a set of ESPON projects analysing regional strategies for sustainable and inclusive territorial development – Regional Strategies for Sustainable and Inclusive Territorial Development (ReSSI) (ESPON, 2018), ReSSI – Estonia (ESPON, 2021) and ReSSI – Latvia (ESPON, 2021). These projects set out to explore practices for aligning the evolving territorial governance frameworks with the emerging logics of, and challenges in, local and regional development. There was a particular focus on addressing issues of institutional capacity to build broad circles of cooperation with diverse stakeholders, and on related capacity-building policies, which are central to the redefinition of governance
structures and procedures.