As several Western Balkans countries aspire to become members of the European Union (EU) in the (near) future, it is interesting to explore to what extent EU territorial trends are adopted in both the official national regulations and spatial planning practice. To do so, we: 1) screen EU territorial policies to elucidate the trends and principles of territorial development, 2) analyse the contents of spatial plans in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and 3) compare the practical application of the principles such as decentralisation, diffusion of power, subsidiarity, multi-actorship, synergy, transparency, citizen participation, coordinated action (among various disciplinary bodies), and holistic strategies. The findings show the ineffectiveness of declaratively adopted EU territorial trends against place-based territorial policy approaches.

Public participation in planning, though a foundational democratic principle, faces persistent implementation challenges across diverse planning systems. This paper examines participatory planning practice in Ireland and Serbia—two countries representing distinct planning traditions (discretionary and conformance-based, respectively) yet confronting shared structural pressures. Through comparative analysis of four local land use planning instruments (the Development Plan and Local Area Plan in Ireland; the Municipal Spatial Plan and General Regulation Plan in Serbia), the study investigates how institutional design and legislative frameworks shape the depth and quality of participatory practice. Methodologically, the research triangulates statutory regulations, public hearing documentation, and non-statutory participation records across two planning scales (county/municipal and local/sub-municipal). A four-dimensional analytical framework—informing, consultation, collaboration, and monitoring—guides the systematic comparison of participatory mechanisms across the selected cases. Findings reveal that, while both systems remain predominantly at the informing and consultation levels, critical differences emerge in how participation is structured and documented in institutional practice. Ireland’s discretionary system enables multi-channel information dissemination, feedback-oriented consultation, and non-statutory collaborative experimentation beyond legal minimums. Serbia’s conformance-based system confines participation largely to statutory procedures, with objection-based consultation and limited collaborative mechanisms, though distinctive features, such as the public hearing session, provide direct opportunities for deliberation absent in the Irish context. The study contributes to European comparative planning scholarship by demonstrating that participatory depth is shaped less by the formal existence of legal provisions than by the interplay between institutional design, procedural arrangements, transparency, and responsiveness.

Public participation in planning, though a foundational democratic principle, faces implementation challenges across diverse planning systems worldwide. This study examines participatory planning practice in Ireland and Serbia – two contexts shaped by distinct planning traditions yet confronting similar tensions between democratic ideals and practice realities. Through comparative analysis of four local land-use planning instruments (Development Plans and Local Area Plans in Ireland; Spatial Plans and General Regulation Plans in Serbia), the research investigates how institutional design, power relations, and democratic commitments embedded within planning systems fundamentally shape participatory outcomes. Beyond external pressures such as neoliberalisation and democratic decline, the study demonstrates that the internal dynamics of participation, seen in the quality of dialogue, distribution of knowledge, strength of civic networks, and negotiation of power among stakeholders, ultimately determine whether participatory processes enable genuine democratic engagement or reproduce existing hierarchies. Methodologically, the research triangulates statutory regulations, public hearing documentation, and non-statutory participation records across multiple planning scales. Employing a four-dimensional analytical framework, including informing, consultation, collaboration, and monitoring, the analysis traces information dissemination strategies, consultation mechanisms, collaborative practices, and transparency structures. Findings reveal that, while both systems remain largely at the informing and consulting levels, critical differences emerge: Ireland demonstrates multi-channel, immersive approaches, feedback-oriented consultation, and structured collaborative experimentation, whereas Serbia exhibits statutory-minimal information provision, objection-based adversarial procedures, and exceptional rather than systematic collaboration. The study advances comparative European planning scholarship by identifying how planning cultures, legislative frameworks, and institutional responsiveness generate divergent participatory outcomes even under similar global pressures, offering practical insights for strengthening inclusive urban governance across varied institutional contexts.

In accordance with the valid normative framework in Serbia, the decision on preparation of a planning document is rendered by the authority competent for its adoption, upon securing the prior opinion of the authority responsible for professional control, i.e. the planning commission, except for the Spatial Plan of the Republic of Serbia, for which the decision on the preparation is rendered by the Government of the Republic of Serbia, on the proposal of the ministry responsible for spatial planning. Although one of the initial ones, the decision on preparation of a planning document represents a very significant step in the planning process, which in practice very often focuses only on meeting formal conditions, without sufficient consideration of possible consequences in the further process of preparation and adoption of planning documents. In this sense, the paper discusses the normative framework for the decision on preparation of a planning document, it presents the basic characteristics with examples from domestic and foreign practice, and it points out the problems that arise, in order to provide proposals for improving the situation in this area in the concluding part of the paper.