ESPON celebrated 20 years of innovative support for territorial policymaking in a both nostalgic and inspirational event that took place at the European Convention Center in Luxembourg at 28 September. Speeches from minister Claude Turmes, Minister for Spatial Planning for Luxembourg, and Director General of DG Regio, Marc Lemaître, reflected on the past and the future of the programme. Mr. Turmes linked ESPON's work with the past and current challenges Europe is facing from energy to climate and from ageing to reselience. And Mr Lemaître compared ESPON to start-up that "offered 20 extremely convincing years asand that is we have big expectations for the future". Roby Biwer, Member of the Committee of the Regions described the synergies between ESPON and the CoR.

In their video mesages, Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms, Elisa Ferreira, congratulated ESPON for its 20 years of breaking new ground in territorial analysis and deep work with policy makers and experts across Europe and Jan Olbrycht, Member of the European Parliament and president of the URBAN Intergroup shared his long experience in working with ESPON and how the programme supported the implementation and the evolution of Cohesion policy. 

Thiemo Eser, from the Managing Authority of the Programme highlighted 5 milestones in the life of the programme, and the two former directors, Peter Mehlbye, (Director of the Coordination Unit 2002-2015) and Ilona Raugze, (Director of the ESPON EGTC 2015-2020) remebered some key moments of their time. Then Wiktor Szydarowski, Director of the ESPON EGTC,  presnted the objectives and thematic activities for the new programming period 2021-2027.

The event closed with a testimonial videos from different ESPON stakeholders, that you can watch here.