ABSTRACT
In Chapter 7 I related that the makers of the ESDP hoped for Commission support for generating Europe-wide data sets. Without an EU competence, there was no budget line, the Commission retorted. When it eventually came to setting up ESPON under INTERREG, the Commission had already invoked territorial cohesion as a concept. What does it mean? Rather than giving a definition outright, in the Introduction I suggested that the thing to ask was: who has invoked the concept, when, and why? Below I answer these questions followed by an account of ESPON and the Territorial Agenda of the European Union (TA 2007), the Member State reaction to the rise to prominence of territorial cohesion.
