In spring 2014 through a public consultation ESPON Member and Partner States consulted all relevant stakeholders throughout Europe in order to improve the shape of the future ESPON programme and ensure its sound implementation.

The online consultation was open from 4th March 2014 until 2nd April 2014 to local, regional and national authorities responsible for territorial development as well as other relevant policy fields; authorities responsible for implementing ESI funds; organisations promoting different regional/urban interests at EU level; policymakers and public planners at national, regional and local level; university academics and researchers; the private sector; economic and social partners as well as bodies representing thematic groupings and civil society, including environmental partners, non-governmental organisations, etc.

A consultation report is available below.

Public Consultation on the ESPON 2020 Cooperation Programme

The ESPON programme 2014-2020 is currently being developed and through this consultation your feedback would be very welcome.

The intention is to use the results of this consultation to fine tune the draft Cooperation Programme for ESPON 2020 before submission to the European Commission for approval.

Renewal of ESPON

EU Member States have, together with four Partner States (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland), been working on shaping the Cooperation Programme for ESPON 2020 and a draft version of the Cooperation Programme has now been prepared.

The ambition is to renew, refocus and upgrade ESPON, learning from the experience from the ESPON 2013 Programme implementation. This is proposed to include the establishment of a new administrative structure, the ESPON EGTC that will be contracted to carry through the content of the new programme. The ESPON EGTC will dispose of more in-house capacity to swiftly produce territorial evidence with the right timing to ongoing policy processes.

Administratively, the ESPON EGTC will launch calls for tender and make use of service contracts only, as part of ensuring a lean setting.

Thematic Objective

EU Cohesion Policy for 2014-2020 proposes eleven common thematic objectives in order to ensure it delivers a real impact. The ESPON 2020 Cooperation Programme will address Objective 11 as follows:

“Enhancing institutional capacity and an efficient public administration by strengthening of institutional capacity and the efficiency of public administrations and public services related to implementation of the ERDF, and in support of actions in institutional capacity and in the efficiency of public administration supported by the ESF”.

However, in addressing this theme and in providing high quality territorial evidence to policy development, the ESPON 2020 Cooperation Programme is envisaged to indirectly support all eleven thematic objectives for European Structural and Investment Funds covering the Europe 2020 priorities for Smart, Sustainable and Inclusive Growth.

Mission & Objectives

The mission for ESPON during 2014-2020 is as follows:

ESPON 2020 shall continue the consolidation of a European Territorial Observatory Network and grow the provision and policy use of pan-European, comparable, systematic and reliable territorial evidence.”

Building on this overall mission statement, the draft Cooperation Programme sets out five specific objectives for activities during 2014-2020 in order to: (1) produce territorial evidence through applied research; (2) upgrade knowledge transfer and support to users in targeted analyses and policy briefs/working papers; (3) improve territorial observation of Europe and tools for analyses; (4) widen outreach and uptake of territorial analyses; and (5) deliver a more streamlined administrative structure to promptly inform policy processes.

Geographical Scope and Preliminary Budget

The programme covers the entire territory of the European Union (EU) plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.

The programme is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) with an amount of €41.3 million. Member and Partner States are envisaged to add their financial contribution making a total budget of slightly above €50 million for the 2014-2020 period.

Public Consultation

Through this public consultation ESPON Member and Partner States wish to consult all relevant stakeholders throughout Europe, e.g. local, regional and national authorities responsible for territorial development as well as other relevant policy fields; authorities responsible for implementing ESI funds; organisations promoting different regional/urban interests at EU level; policymakers and public planners at national, regional and local level; university academics and researchers; the private sector; economic and social partners as well as bodies representing thematic groupings and civil society, including environmental partners, non-governmental organisations, etc.

Your answers will contribute to improving the shape of the future programme and ensuring its sound implementation.

The survey is open from 4th March 2014 until 2nd April 2014.

Download the ESPON 2020 draft Cooperation Programme document.

We advise all interested to consult or read the draft Cooperation Programme before completing the questionnaire. You may download the PDF version of the questionnaire to prepare your answers. Answers may only be submitted online, in English.

For any difficulties completing this questionnaire, please contact [email protected], stating 'Public Consultation' in the subject line.

Start the online questionnaire

Documents

ESPON_2020_Public_Consultation_Report-FINAL-30-6-2014.pdf

  • Acrobat Document | 405KB

CP_PUBLIC_CONSULTATION_ESPON_2020-V5-4-3-2014.pdf

  • Acrobat Document | 1.02MB

2014.03.04_ESPON2020-questionnaire.pdf

  • Acrobat Document | 190KB