Credit: GECT ESPON

The Director of the European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation, Ilona Raugze, presented on Friday the ESPON 2014-2020 Programme to Luxembourg Minister of Spatial Planning, Claude Turmes, at the ESPON EGTC.

The Director presented the ESPON 2014-2020 Programme, which aims to develop comparable pan-European territorial knowledge as well as timely and relevant recommendations in support of regional, national and European territorial policies. ESPON initiates applied scientific research on European territorial developments, sustainable development, regional policy and the competitiveness of territories. The missions and objectives of the programme have been the subject of an informative exchange on both the results already achieved and the future prospects of the programme and the future cohesion policy of the European Union.

On this occasion, Minister Turmes congratulated the programme for past successes that resulted in the production of many territorial data relevant to various sectoral policies. He also assured the ESPON team of the support of the Department of Regional Planning as the managing authority in the continuation of the work of the programme, emphasising the importance and the need to continue producing quality scientific analyses.

ESPON, "European Territorial Observatory Network", is a pan-European programme managed by the Department of Spatial Planning, DATer, of the Ministry of Energy and Spatial Planning on behalf of all EU Member States, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. The ESPON 2020 programme is the European territorial observation network which provides scientific analyses and makes recommendations for territorial and sectoral policies in a number of contexts such as the economy and finance, unemployment, direct investment abroad, the circular economy and low carbon emissions, health, migration or efficient governance. 

Adopted on 26 May 2016 by the European Commission, the ESPON 2020 programme for the 2014-2020 period has a budget of €48,678,851, of which €41,377,019 comes from the EU (85%) and an additional €1,850,000 comes from the other partner countries.