Parliamentary Secretary Dr Falzon attended the Council of Europe Conference of Ministers responsible for Spatial/Regional Planning (CEMAT)

Dr Falzon participated in the 16th session of the Council of Europe Conference of Ministers responsible for Spatial/Regional Planning (CEMAT) in Athens, Greece. The theme of the conference was Territorial Democracy in Spatial Planning. In his intervention, Dr Falzon dwelt on the role of the Council of Europe, as a forum to foster dialogue between the European partners and the importance of territorial democracy to achieve successful spatial planning. He emphasized that this is especially so for a small country such as Malta, where space is at a premium.

Dr Falzon explained how Malta has long recognised the need to ensure that there is integration between the different sectors to resolve conflicts and pre-empt problems at implementation stages and that Malta has set out the preparation of a strategic plan which is a spatial translation of Government’s plans and policies. He linked the list of strategic actions and projects which ultimately need to be implemented possibly through the undertaking of Cohesion policy funds and outlined the intrinsic linkages between these programmes to ensure that there are no conflicts at policy level, project level, implementation and funding level.

Dr Falzon discussed how for such plans to be effective and implementable, participation and involvement of all stakeholders ranging from local councils, constituted bodies, NGOs and the gener- al public has to be sought from the outset to ensure that these plans are truly representative and implementable.

Despite all the criticism that plan- ning processes face, the policy and decision formulation processes in Malta are extremely accessible and enable representations at all stages of the process.