In the past 10-15 years, several discussions and/or paradigmatic hypotheses have stemmed from the more relevant economic and territorial international scientific theories of the 90s, EU political reports, declarations and directives with regard to both competitiveness and sustainability. Recently, their critical revision has permitted a definition of the question of the discussion about the Lisbon and Gothenburg Strategy in Europe: how to be competitive in sustainability and review the concepts of sustainability and competitiveness in the European territorial dimension by new criteria and indicators of measure. This paper wishes also to evidence, as in order to apply the updated Lisbon and Gothenburg Strategy goals it should be, to introduce a real territorial dimension into assessment processes, developing them by the new Structural Funds 2007-2013. An ex ante analysis of the impacts of these strategies 2000-2006 and a new methodological approach was useful for both these scopes. These ambitious goals were developed into the ESPON Programme, developing four key "determinants" or composite indicators as very significant expression of the two strategie

Taking inspiration from the ideas of Kitson et al. (Camb J Econ Reg Soc 4:289-302, 2011) and other authors Pettifor (The coming first world debt crisis. Palgrave, London, 2006) and Rodriguez-Pose (Econ Geogr 86:361-370, 2010), the paper analyzes and discusses the so defined Geographies of Austerity in front of the current crisis. The resulting critical considerations suggest to adopt rigorous measures rather than austerity measures, in order to not invalidate the development efforts implemented by states and regions. Discussions are also directed to that part of the European and Italian economic and political Geography that used traditional tools to read economic trends in a strongly territorialized key. The lack of participation of the economic Geography to European public policies affected especially the 2007-2013 programming that mainly focused on boosting competitiveness in the global market. These considerations are discussed to investigate the causes which hindered to take significant preventive measures, as in the case of Italy. Different and ''sustainable'' solutions can come from several spatial approaches and baseline scenarios based on uncertain economic forecasts that economic and political geography has produced in Europe.

Polycentric development, territorial cohesion, and territorial diversity are some of the main principles supported at the European level for reducing regional disparities and for making territories more resilient and diversified, which strengthens the competitiveness of Europe in the global economy. This research article, starting from the final results of the ESPON Linking Networks of Protected Areas to Territorial Development (LinkPAs) project, considers that the protected areas (PAs) are a territorial unit able to connect—in a polycentric approach—the different territorial aspects (economic, social, environmental) present in an area to implement cross-border public services (CPS) to share in a larger territorial context through a network of protected areas (NPA). Toward this aim, this paper suggests applying the NPA management model developed in the ESPON LinkPAs project to CPS to assess if a soft governance mechanism is able to efficiently and sustainably manage the CPS.

Abstract:The paper focuses on territorial impacts of the European policy with regards to the enterprise systems in the last decade and how the effects of this policy could have irreparable modified the enterprise network relationships (socio-functional and interrelated/cohesive) in regions. This suspicion has suggested European choices include the territorial dimension in the development directions by the intra and inter-regional co-operation. The searching new forms of balanced growth for enterprise is the future objective; it could be followed by assuming a territorial polycentric cohesive organization. Important European documents, like Europe 2020 Strategy and Territorial Agenda (2011), stress this orientation. A critical review of Economic Geography literature with regards to main localisation theories of enterprise opens this contribution, in order to accompany the reader in understanding of new strategic parameters able to measure `the regional productive capability' of enterprises in the framework of European recent directions. By using innovative methodologies, the performance of enterprise systems and networks looking at these parameters, highlights European specific territorialised typologies of behaviour. Finally, some policy recommendations are suggested in this direction in order to improve the regional productivity, as well as the employment in relation with to specific economic-social-environmental parameters of cohesion and competitiveness in sustainability, looking at the regional productive capability of Small/Medium Firms (SMFs) in Europe with regards to main pillars of the 2014-2020 Strategy.Keywords: Enterprises' Economic Geography, European Competitiveness, Sustainability Sustainable and Economic Cohesive Development Versus Economic Growth of Enterprises Systems and NetworksThe review and comparison of relevant theoretical/academic literature identify key concepts and definitions with regards to competitiveness and sustainability, and, more recently, to cohesion.In the 1990s, the literature on competitiveness, sustainability and cohesion is developed under different and no linked scientific domains; the research on the competitiveness performance concerning enterprises is the largest and more dynamic. Since the 2000s, interdisciplinary relationships among these three concepts are developed.Initially, competitiveness is considered by different forms of access to foreign markets and as one of the main factors of the theory of international exchange the study of the behavior and strategy of the enterprise. The basic causes of competitiveness were to be studied according to diverse starting resources and different technological levels, in relation to scale performances and to the change of the factors prices and assets [4,16,20,32].A few works only extend the analysis to the role of the access procedures to foreign markets (internationalization)1 . The internationalisation of the enterprises was only one of the components influencing the firm's competitiveness and its role could be estimated o...

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