Reforming legislation, undermining planning? Spatial planning law reform in Serbia, Ireland, and Poland

This paper examines recent reforms to spatial planning laws in Serbia, Ireland, and Poland – three countries representing markedly different planning traditions and political-institutional contexts, yet burdened by similar triggers for changes in spatial planning legislation. Drawing on a literature review, the analysis traces four key drivers (flexibility and adaptability, internal consistency of planning instruments, involvement of diverse actors, and opportunistic responses to development pressures) across a three-step comparative framework: pre-reform challenges, reform content, and reform effects. Findings reveal a convergence: despite different starting conditions, reforms in all three countries were driven primarily by the logic of accelerating development, producing outcomes that deepened rather than resolved systemic planning weaknesses. In Serbia and Ireland, reforms have systematically curtailed public participation and concentrated decision-making authority at the national level, while in Poland, the reform’s silence on actor involvement left the structural dominance of private interests unchanged. Across all three cases, internal inconsistencies among planning instruments persisted or worsened, and the intended flexibility of new regulatory frameworks was undermined by implementation failures. The paper concludes that opportunistic legislative reforms framed as necessary adaptations increasingly serve as mechanisms through which project-driven development logic overrides plan-led governance.