The Baltic Sea Region (BSR) includes Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark as well as North-West Russia and Northern Germany. The BSR is the first European macro-region having a vision for spatial development (adopted in 1994, renewed in 2009).

The region is a highly heterogeneous area in economic, environmental and cultural terms. Spatial integration is hindered by the existing divides. Some of the countries are EU member states, whereas the others are not foreseeing EU accession.

Scope

Europe’s seas have become important in terms of policy making on both European and national level. The exploitation of seas and coastal areas for economic purposes is becoming increasingly important, but there are also growing concerns on environmental issues.

To date, there is no elaborated territorial impact assessment methodology/model that has proven to be well-suited for assessing the ex-post impacts of CBC programmes. The service provider will develop a step-by-step methodology, describing how to determine the ex-post impact of cross-border cooperation (CBC) programmes on the territorial development of the border regions. A test of the methodology will also be performed in five stakeholder territories by providing evidence on how the elaborated methodology works in practice.

The Alpine area is composed of territories with different demographic, social and economic trends and a rich cultural, linguistic and biological diversity. This diversity goes along with a variety of governance systems and traditions. The region has a strong identity and a longstanding tradition in cooperation. This unique territory has important potentials for dynamic development, but is facing major challenges at various levels including the pan-Alpine, regional and local levels as well as in cross-border areas.

Scope

More than 4.5 million young people (aged 15-24 years) are unemployed today in the EU. Younger generations have been hardest hit by the fallout from the global financial crisis than most other groups. Today’s situation reflects a serious and structural problem. The EU has established the Youth Guarantee to ensure that all EU Member States make a good-quality offer to all young people up to age 25 of a job, continued education, an apprenticeship or a traineeship within four months of leaving formal education or becoming unemployed.

More than 4.5 million young people (aged 15-24 years) are unemployed today in the EU. Younger generations have been hardest hit by the fallout from the global financial crisis than most other groups. Today’s situation reflects a serious and structural problem. The EU has established the Youth Guarantee to ensure that all EU Member States make a good-quality offer to all young people up to age 25 of a job, continued education, an apprenticeship or a traineeship within four months of leaving formal education or becoming unemployed.

The main objective of this research activity is to provide territorial analysis on the impacts of European Structural and Investment Funds’ financial instruments in the 2007-2013 programming period and where data allows in the 2014-2020 programming period.

Governance systems in Europe are changing to become less top down, more flexible, and involve a wider group of public and private organisations. This raises questions of interdependencies across levels of governance, and amongst public and private actors, institutions and organisations. Simultaneously, the influence of national governance and planning traditions make these changes path and context-dependent.

Scope

This study will further elaborate on relevant results of the ESPON TIGER analysis on FDI flows, as well as experiences of the ESPON FOCI and ESPON ITAN projects.

The main objective of this research activity is to map and analyse the territorial patterns and performance of SMEs in Europe, and to propose territorial development strategies that can be considered in different regions and cities to further strengthen the development and sustainability of the SMEs.