- Volume 4 (2016), Issue 2
- Vol. 4 (2016), No. 2
- >
- Pages 87 - 99
- pp. 87 - 99
The EU Cohesion Fund and Spatial Planning Strategies in Transport and Risk Prevention: Portugal (1995-2013)
As the name suggests, the Cohesion Fund is an EU redistributive instrument whose main goal is to promote territorial cohesion by financing projects in the Transport and Environmental territorial development components. This paper discusses its main effects in reducing regional disparities by increasing the territorial connectivity and in supporting risk prevention measures in Portugal throughout the last few decades. Furthermore, it presents the Cohesion Fund’s main interventions and the existing spatial planning guidelines in these domains. In this context, it argues that, overall, the Cohesion Fund had a positive role in improving the Portuguese territorial connectivity and was instrumental in supporting some key goals of the Portuguese Transport Strategic Plan. In the environmental domain, however, the risk prevention goal was largely underfinanced, and the investments in this area were essentially devoted to coastal erosion prevention measures.