September 2013 - The Europe 2020 Strategy aims at responding to the challenges facing Europe, such as the global economic crisis, climate change and energy security by focusing on three growth priorities for ensuring European competitiveness: smart, sustainable and inclusive growth.

These three mutually reinforcing growth priorities are meant to guide the EU and Member States, their regions and cities, fostering an economy with high levels of employment, increased productivity and territorial cohesion.

For each growth priority, policy headline targets have been defined, which are measured by indicators giving information on the achievements related to the Europe 2020 objectives.

In order to benchmark the current position of regions in Europe in relation to the Europe 2020 Strategy, an aggregate index measures each region’s distance to the European headline targets.

ESPON has analysed the territorial dimension of the individual indicators related to the Europe 2020 Strategy. This can be found in the ESPON Atlas “Territorial Dimension of the Europe 2020 Strategy”. Selected from this atlas, an appetizer of three indicators, each related to one of the three growth priorities, allow for first insights on the territorial diversity of regional potentials and challenges for achieving smart, sustainable and inclusive growth.

ESPON Evidence Brief No.2 “Territorial Dimensions of Europe 2020 Strategy” is available below.

Should you have questions regarding the ESPON Evidence Brief, please do not hesitate to contact the ESPON Coordination Unit at [email protected]