Integration Of The Sustainable Development Evaluation Process In Regional Planning: Promises And Problems In The Case Of France

The paper outlines how the sustainable regional development evaluation process is integrated within the planning and management cycle in the French context. Among the regions that have established reliable evaluation systems, some have tried to incorporate issues relating to sustainable development, thereby complying with European and national demands. But an overview of experiments made in the different French regions shows a wide variety of situations, with no single coordinated procedure allowing comparisons to be drawn. By way of example, the way this integration is implemented in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region is presented. In this region, political backing, due largely to the presence of green representatives in the regional council, enabled considerable upstream work to be carried out, notably concerning strategic environmental evaluation and policy evaluation with regard to sustainable development. Finally, the paper presents the outcomes of the evaluation process with regard to sustainable regional development: an effect of inter-institutional decompartmentalisation leading to greater transversality have been noticed, as well as a process of an active awareness-raising. But a gap between technical and political levels is still noticeable.