What became of the Leipzig Principles?

The building blocks for the ESDP were largely set during a meeting of EU Spatial Planning Ministers in September 1994 in Leipzig. Over time, these fundamental elements came to be known as the 'Leipzig principles'. They are not written in stone as the term 'principles' might suggest, but are occasionally elaborated on, and sometimes — especially in the case of the sustainability concept — even drastically altered. Moreover, some important spatial planning issues, such as having a firm knowledge base of spatial trends, were not included in the Leipzig principles and therefore sometimes became the subject of fierce discussion during the period leading up to the first official draft of the ESDP, published in June 1997.