At the recent Open Days organised by the European Commission in Brussels, ESPON participated with a Workshop on 7 October 2009 under the theme “Achieving results, looking ahead: EU Cohesion Policy’s evaluation and future prospects”.

The ESPON Workshop supported the exchange, debate and networking among Europe’s experts and decision-makers in regional and local development, with first results from two new ESPON Projects; (1) one applied research project (EDORA) dealing with the diversity of rural areas in Europe and their different economic development opportunities, and (2) a targeted analysis (TeDi) focusing on the types of regions within Europe, their opportunities and challenges.

As an important statement at the workshop, Director Natalija Kazlauskiene, from the European Commission - DG Regio, confirmed that ESPON has a key role in feeding the policy making process with sound and robust analysis. Another interesting message voiced was that the diversity of European regions requires unique policy mixes for the individual regions which makes it challenging to think of European policy priorities related to a typology of regions.

The ESPON Programme will continue stimulating dialogue between policymakers, stakeholders, project partners and the network of ESPON Contact Points. An important event will be the internal ESPON seminar, organised in co-operation with the Swedish EU Presidency for early December 2009, focusing on the use of ESPON knowledge in regional/territorial analyses and hence supporting policymaking from the regional to the European level. Another interesting open event is the ESPON Workshop on 5 November 2009 in Luxembourg addressing functionally defined areas with internal consistency that can form the basis for future territorial cooperation, where a few spaces are still available.

Peter Mehlbye
Director ESPON Coordination Unit