Assessing territorial impacts

1. Assessing territorial impacts Operational guidance Presented by Lewis Dijkstra, EconomicAnalysis unit in DG REGIO 9 October 2013

2. Structure of the presentation • What does assessing territorial impacts mean? • Why assess territorial impacts? • When assess territorial impacts? • How to assess territorial impacts? • Statistical description • Projection • Modelling interactions • Tools • Consultations • Conclusion

3. Longstanding demand • European Spatial Development Perspective 1999 • Lisbon Treaty (2007) • Debate following the Green Paper on Territorial Cohesion (2008) • Territorial Agenda (ongoing) • Action point as part of the Roadmap towards an integrated, territorial approach adopted during the Polish Presidency in 2011

4. Action Point of Road Map • preparation of a handbook on territorial impact assessment and the dissemination of best practices existing in the EU countries throughout workshops, conferences, [and] publication of the handbook • Commission contributes at Commission level

5. The IA guidelines contain many questions on territorial impacts • Will it have a specific impact on certain regions? • Is there a single Member State, region or sector which is disproportionately affected (so-called “outlier” impact)? • Does it affect equal access to services and goods? • Does it affect specific localities more than others? • Does it affect land designated as sensitive for ecological reasons? • Does it lead to a change in land use (for example, the divide between rural and urban…)?

6. What does it mean to assess territorial impacts? • Check for asymmetric territorial impacts • Territorial means more spatial with a few angles: • Administrative or political levels: regional or local • Types of regions or areas such as: Border regions or rural areas • Functional areas such as: river basins, labour market areas, service areas, metro areas

7. Why? • Can make EU policies effective because better objectives can be negotiated • For example, concerns for asymmetric impact will lead to MS resistance. They may oppose high air quality standards or further opening up trade • Can make EU policies efficient • For example, granting some MS more time to implement a policy can reduce the costs

8. Assessing territorial impact has become easier • New sub-national data sources: Eurostat, ESPON, JRC, EEA, GMES, OECD, UN, GIS-based analysis… • New harmonised definitions of regions and areas: • Cities and commuting zones • Metro regions • Cities, towns and suburbs and rural areas • Urban, intermediate and rural regions • Border, mountain, island, sparsely populated and coastal regions • New tools

9. How can policies respond? • Adjust the policy for the entire Union or some of its parts (state aid) • Grant more time to implement a policy in some parts of the union (urban waste water) • Exempt some parts of the union from the policy (outermost regions) • Use existing policies, including Cohesion Policy, to address asymmetric territorial impacts (UWW) • Create a new instrument to address asymmetric territorial impacts if/when they arise (EGF)

10. Which policies to assess? • Policies that • explicitly target a (type of) region or area • treat issues that have a significant asymmetric spatial distribution • Other policies do NOT need to assess territorial impacts

11. Does theproposalexplicitly target a region or area? When to do a TIA? yes Assess territorial impacts no Willtheproposal significantly affect some regions or areas more thanothers? yes no An assessment of territorial impactsisnotneeded

12. What regions or areas? • Already identified by MS or Commission? Then use these in the IA • Still to be identified by MS or Commission? • Use harmonised definitions of regions or areas, including metro, urban-rural, border, island, mountain and sparsely populated regions and urban-rural areas, cities and commuting zones. • Use proxies to identify regions

13. How? Three basic methods • Qualitative approach (no data and/or no regions or areas) • Quantitative approach (no interaction) • Modeling approach (interaction)

14. Can theregionorareabeidentified? no QUALITATIVE ASSESSMENT QUALITATIVE ASSESSMENT yes Are statistical data available? STATISTICAL DESCRIPTION AND PROJECTIONS no no yes SIMULATION OF THE IMPACT WITH MODELS Does thepolicy lead to interactions? QUALITATIVE ASSESSMENT yes

15. Qualitative methods: three elements • Spatial distribution of: • the main problem or driver (exposure) • the capacity to respond to the problem implement the policy (sensitivity) • the actors involved in the policy response (actors) • The potential territorial impact is the combination of the three former issues. • Impact = exposure + sensitivity + actors

16. Adapting to Climate Change • Spatial distribution of climate change • Capacity to respond both of ecosystems and human systems • Actors, including those at the local and regional level, involved in setting up adaptation strategies • Territorial impact depends on the spatial distribution of exposure, adaptive capacity and the actors in policy implementation

17. Quantitative methods: three approaches • Description of issue at the sub-national level • Maps • Graphs • Projection of the issue at the sub-national level • Eurostat • JRC • ESPON • ESPON ARTS QuickCheck • EEA QuickScan

18. Modeling: six models • When the issue interacts with other issues a model can help to assess impacts • Six JRC models with a sub-national component • LUMP: Land Use Modelling Platform • TRANS-TOOLS: Transport model • RHOMOLO: Regional Holistic Model • CAPRI: Common Agricultural Policy Regional IA • RIAT-Chimere: Air quality scenarios • Rural Ec Mod: Ex ante Spatial Policy IA

19. Stakeholder consultation • Do you expect that this policy will have a disproportionately large impact on certain areas, regions or Member States? If yes, please indicate which ones and why. • According to your knowledge and information, is this problem concentrated in certain areas, regions or Member States? • EC may ask Committee of the Regions for support in preparing its impact assessments

20. Good practice examples from Commission • White paper: Roadmap to a Single European Transport Area • Common Agricultural Policy for 2014-2020 • White paper: Adapting to Climate Change • Coastal zone management and maritime spatial planning Available on the EC IA website

21. Conclusion • Responds to MS request • Improves effectiveness and efficiency of policies • Fits with IA guidelines and does not create additional administrative burden • Provides an overview of harmonised definitions of regions and areas • Provides methodological guidance for both qualitative and quantitative methods • Provides an overview of subnational data sources

22. Next steps • Training on the assessing the territorial dimension in Ispra, JRC 9-10 December • Continued investment sub-national/territorial statistics from official and other sources • Continued investments in regional/spatial models • Reinforcing of the local and regional typologies • Reinforcing ESPON with an explicit mandate for operational support for TIA

23. Thank you for your attention More info: http://ec.europa.eu/governance/impact/key_docs/key_docs_en.htm Questions or comments Lewis.dijkstra@ec.europa.eu