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 targeted Cross-border Public Services (CPS) analysis aimed to improve delivery practices of CPS in European border-regions and to increase awareness about the added value of CPS provision. The project produced a first comprehensive overview of CPS across Europe. This overview allowed to explore territorial patterns of CPS provision and to highlight the main features of good practice examples.

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.

The conclusions of the Luxembourg Presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2015 invited the upcoming presidencies, together with EU institutions, to start the process of preparing a Territorial Agenda post-2020. This should be informed by a long-term scenario and visioning process involving relevant stakeholders from all sectors and levels of government.

Regions with specific territorial features have received increasing attention in recent years, most notably in article 174 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU).
Key policy documents identify the specific types of territories in two ways: as having particular challenges, and as having particular assets, many of benefit to Europe as a whole.
Addressing the opportunities and challenges of specific types of territories implies that these territories need to be considered in context rather than ‘singled out’.

Based on the Swiss experience in defining the so-called “action areas”, this service contract is aiming at exploring the added value and potentials of new forms of cooperation areas. In particular it should analyse for which tasks and territorial/political context “action areas” do make sense in terms of territorial cooperation.

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.

In the late 1990’s the European Commission published the ‘EU Compendium on Spatial Planning Systems and Policies’ which covered the 15 EU member states at that time. Since then, the EU has expanded to 28 member states and there have been significant developments in pan-European territorial and cohesion policies. Territorial governance and spatial planning systems have now evolved to become one of the key components of integrated cross-sectoral development strategies and policy delivery mechanisms among ESPON member and partner states.