Committee of the Regions, Brussels
Tuesday, 07 October 2014
The aim of the workshop was to highlight the importance of impact assessments and, in particular, territorial impacts assessments along the whole EU legislative process and for all the actors involved, from the Commission, to the Parliament, the Council, the Members States and the CoR and regional parliaments. So it was explained by the moderator, Mr Beck, from Kehl Euroinstitut.
The importance of implementing place-based approaches either in innovation ecosystems or in cross-border dialogue; the concerns about the territorial impact of public policies; the reality of the data available to measure governance and the need for more regional and local data focused the discussions of the first panel, opened by Mr. Markkula, Member of the Committee of the Regions. There was an opportunity to hear experiences from Ms Stanczuk-Olejnik, who presented the work of the Polish Government, Ms Prouheze from the French Government and Ms Erdmenger from the German Federal Government. Mr Böhme, Director of Spatial Foresight and Mr Mehlbye from ESPON talked about the benefits of the Territorial Impact Assessments (TIA) and the tools available to assess those impacts. Mr Dijkstra from DG REGIO gave the European Commission's point of view insisting on the data approach.
The panel on Territorial Impact Assessments for better EU law-making showed what the EU institutions are delivering in this field. Mr Schneider, Member of the Committee of the Regions and Rapporteur on the Territorial Impact Assessments open it explaining the work of the CoR after the adoption of the TIA Strategy earlier this year as a tool for its members and as a contribution for better EU law-making.
The recent evolution and the work of the European Parliament with the Impact Assessments and Evaluations of the EU legislation were exposed by its Head of Units, Ms Davies and Mr Huber. Finally, Ms Montesinos explained the coordination work done at the Commission, by the IA Unit at the Secretary-General Directorate.
Thomas Wobben, Director of Directorate E of the Committee of the Regions, closed the conference wishing a stronger presence of the place-based approach in the European Council and a stronger cooperation of the Committee of the Regions and the European Parliament on the impact assessments.
He called the European Commission to start assessing territorial impacts on a regular basis as the territorial impacts almost always occur if there are sectorial impacts. Mr Wobben would also like to see a network of regional administrative units working together on territorial impact assessments allowing the EC to access the needed data quickly and effectively.
The conference was organised in cooperation with the Ministry for Infrastructure and Development of Poland, Prime Minister's Commission for Equality of the Territories of France, and Ministry for Transport and Digital Infrastructure of Germany.
