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In recent years the Open Method of Co-ordination (OMC) has emerged as an increasingly important instrument of EU governance. Rather than relying on legally binding rules, the OMC works through the diffusion and evaluation of information. On 2 September 2005 Ingmar von Homeyer, Senior Fellow at Ecologic, gave a presentation on the application of the OMC in EU environmental policy at a workshop organised by the German Federal Office for Building and Spatial Planning (BBR) in Bonn.

The workshop “Options for the Application of the Open Method of Co-ordination (OMC) in European Spatial Development” brought together experts on, respectively, spatial planning and the OMC to discuss whether the OMC could be used to co-ordinate the spatial development policies of EU Member States.  Experience with measures that are similar to the OMC in EU environmental policy provides valuable lessons for using the OMC in spatial planning because environmental OMC type measures are frequently used to address cross-cutting issues. This type of issues is highly relevant from a spatial development perspective.

Jonathan Zeitlin, Professor of Sociology, History and Public Affairs, Director of the Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy (WAGE), and Founding Co-Director of the European Union Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Martin Heidenreich, Professor at the Department of Social Sciences and Economics, Otto-Friedrich-University, Bamberg, and Nicole Schäfer, BBR, also gave presentations. In the afternoon Andreas Faludi, Professor at Delft University of Technology, Peter Mehlbye, Director of the ESPON Co-ordination Unit, and Joaquin Farinos Dasi, Professor at the Instituto Inter-Universitario de Desarrollo Local (IIDL), University of Valencia, joined the speakers for a panel discussion that was moderated by Wendelin Strübelt, Vice President of the BBR.

The presentation is available for download [pdf, 351 KB, English].