Editorial
Author: Nicolas Rossignol and the ESPON team
On 27 May, we had expected to welcome many of you to Zadar, where our ESPON seminar in cooperation with the Croatian Presidency of the Council of the European Union was to have taken place. But the new normal imposed by COVID-19 requires imagination and different ways of maintaining the social links that we value so much. So, instead of the seminar in Zadar, the EGTC team is offering you the first edition of the ESPON Magazine.
This first edition focuses on a Green Europe, a priority for the Croatian Presidency and for the European Commission. It is also one of the two pillars of the renewed Territorial Agenda that the upcoming German Presidency hopes to see adopted by the end of the year. .
"Vice President Dubravka Šuica delivers very important food for thought for post-COVID Europe, Linking the EU’s priorities fora greener Europe with its demographic challenges, ”
ESPON contributes to these debates with two Policy Briefs on Green Infrastructure and on the Reuse of buildings, that we prepared at the request of the Croatian Presidency. These two briefs are supported by additional contributions from researchers and policy-makers. Among these, we are honoured to share with you messages sent by Claude Turmes, Minister for Energy and Minister for Spatial Planning in Luxembourg; Željko Uhlir, State Secretary for Construction and Physical Planning in Croatia; and Maria Spyraki, member of the European Parliament and co-chair of the Intergroup on Climate change.
But, above all, we are very proud that this first edition also hosts a special message from Vice-President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Democracy and Demography Dubravka Šuica. Linking the EU’s priorities for a greener Europe with its demographic challenges, she delivers very important food for thought for post-COVID Europe.
Because the elephant in the room is the pandemic. As restrictions are now being lifted, national governments and European institutions are taking the lead to find answers to the economic crisis. Yet regional and local authorities are also putting mechanisms in place and adapting their services to better support citizens and businesses.
It can be argued if Europe was prepared for this pandemic. In any case, there are many examples of innovative and creative approaches from local authorities.
This is why the ESPON EGTC started to pool local experiences and territorial policy responses from March 2020, with the idea of supporting further monitoring of the territorial impact of the crisis and policy responses to it for the future.
At the end of May 2020, the ESPON website references more than 30 European organisations and institutions that collect best practices and offer resources (information and/or financing) to local authorities.
" The presence of our community throughout the following pages is our means of expressing our gratitude and giving credit to those who embody the reality of a cooperation programme. ”
While reading about new insights from our ongoing and recently finalised ESPON projects, you will also discover how we are touching upon different aspects of the COVID-19 crisis. From elderly people to tourism and from rural areas to urban environments, ESPON projects deliver some first information on the territorial impacts in different sectors of the economy and social life.
We wanted it to be open as much as possible to our community: the members of our Monitoring Committee, representing the Member and Partner States of the ESPON programme; the ESPON contact points; the officials from the EU institutions and the policy-makers from local governments who are engaged in our projects; and, of course, the researchers who deliver ESPON research activities. Their presence throughout the following pages is our means of expressing our gratitude and giving credit to those who embody the reality of a cooperation programme. We hope that you will appreciate the result.
As for the seminar, we will certainly miss the opening debate, the networking sessions and our talks during the coffee breaks. But let’s try to bring this atmosphere to social media and our website. You can post comments and ask questions related to the topics debated in the magazine using the hashtag #ESPONmag. We will collect all your input and our authors will come back to you with their answers to your questions.
And, we hope, we will all meet again in Berlin for the November 2020 seminar.
Enjoy reading the magazine.