Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
of the cartographic representations ('not clear whether transport corridors on the
map exist or are wishful thinking' (Portugal) (
ibid.
)).
The preparation of 'maps' for the first official draft of the ESDP highlights
three critical aspects for map-making in transnational planning processes. This is,
first, the question of audience and users of the ESDP, which became manifest in
the attempt to find the right cartographic expression for a function that had not
been clearly defined. Second, the competence issue, and also the mandate that
members of the CSD had from their home countries to undertake work on the
ESDP became important for the first time in the ESDP process in the run-up to the
Noordwijk draft - even if it was not always openly discussed. While members on
the CSD tried to improve the cartographic representations proposed by the carto-
graphic group (as in the case of the 'Territorial Framework', Plate 12), this indi-
vidual involvement was challenged when the results of the CSD meeting had to be
presented to those 'back home' - and resulted in the veto of the Spanish delega-
tion. Third, the question of the appropriate spatial issues to be discussed at Euro-
pean level, which affects the level of abstraction for cartographic representations,
is an important aspect for consideration. The 'spatial positioning' (Williams, 1996:
97) skills of CSD members had hardly been challenged until the cartographic
group under the Dutch presidency took up their work (given that earlier 'mapping'
tasks of CSD members had been mainly concentrated on their own familiar territo-
ries), and this resulted in discussions in this phase of the process on what trans-
national planning and cartographic representations at this scale actually entail.
THE COMPLETE DRAFT ESDP (GLASGOW, 1998)
Following the agreement of the first draft of the ESDP at the meeting of ministers
in Noordwijk in 1997, and reflecting earlier controversies about 'policy maps', the
UK presidency proposed to focus exclusively on analytical maps showing the
spatial character of the EU territory.
4
The analytical part of the ESDP and the
accompanying maps were the responsibility of a 'core group' with members from
the UK, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Except for the Dutch cartographer, who
had been involved in the Noordwijk process, all were relatively new to the process.
The core group intended to revise the four Dutch maps in the annexe of the first
draft ESDP (cf. Figure 5.2), in order to separate 'technical - as distinct from policy
- content' (Note to expert group, December 1997, archives of VROM), thus aiming
to clarify their function and present them as indicator-based analytical maps. The
distinction between analytical-technical maps versus policy (or political) maps
reflects the continuing belief in the existence of an 'unbiased' and objective map -
although clearly any selection of what to present, also on analytical maps, implies a
(political) decision. In any case, the translation of the Noordwijk maps into analyti-
cal maps proved to be an insurmountable challenge, as CSD members began to
