ABSTRACT
The analysis of PI undertaken in the individual book chapters concerned the level of the EU but often reference was made to national and sub-national levels because of the particular mode of EU policy implementation that relies heavily on subsidiarity. The selection of the EU policies was based on two principal considerations; first, their importance for socio-spatial development and, second, their role in combating desertification in Mediterranean Europe, a particularly complex, although low profile, policy problem. The policies considered were: regional, rural, transport, social, economic, environmental, water, and biodiversity policy. Forest management was treated as a special case where PI could potentially help compensate for the lack of a common EU forest policy to date. Finally, spatial PI was treated also as a crosscutting issue of fundamental importance for achieving meaningful and effective integration of policies over and across spatial/organizational levels.
