New Challenging ESPON Projects for more than 7 million Euro

 Several ESPON projects have in recent months entered their final phase and new projects have just been launched in open Calls for Proposals. The new Calls will further enlarge the evidence and facts on development dynamics, potentials and challenges within the European territory, its regions and cities.

In total, four applied research projects, five targeted analyses, six projects within the ESPON scientific platform as well as proposals for transnational capitalization of results shall ensure the continuity of ESPON until the end of 2014.

This newsletter presents the new Calls in detail. Research institutions, universities, scientists, experts, academic teams from 31 countries are invited to apply and get involved in production of ESPON knowledge that can support evidence-based and result-oriented implementation of EU Cohesion Policy. The themes selected by policy demand include territorial research and analyses related to the Resilience to Economic Crises, the role of Small and Medium-sized Towns in their functional context, the patterns of Poverty and Social Exclusion in Europe, and many more.

ESPON encourages the academic society of researchers and experts to contribute to the further development of European knowledge of excellence in the field of territorial science. This will be needed to serve the ambition of European regions and cities in a tailor-made and integrated way contributing to a smart, sustainable and inclusive development.

Within ESPON, the selected researchers and experts discuss their project progress and findings with policy makers. This close dialogue between policy makers and project partners shall make ESPON results as relevant as possible for territorial policy development at the different administrative levels.

ESPON is by now politically recognized as a provider of useful territorial observation and evidence from a European perspective. In a second article of this newsletter, Commissioner Hahn, Mr. Michael Smith form the EESC and Minister Wiseler from Luxembourg, outlines why Europe need ESPON and how ESPON facts and evidence from the work of the research teams across Europe is helping to shape policy making.

Moreover, the newsletter presents several ESPON events taking place during autumn 2011. Keep an eye on our website for further details.

Looking forward to seeing you at upcoming ESPON events,

Peter Mehlbye, Director ESPON Coordination Unit

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