Regional and Urban Policy

Assessing territorial impacts

Operational guidance Presented by Lewis Dijkstra, Economic Analysis unit in DG REGIO9 October 2013

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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

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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

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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

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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…)?

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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

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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

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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

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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)

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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

Regional and Urban Policy

When to do a TIA?

no

no

An assessment of territorial impacts is not

needed

Assess

territorial

impacts

Does the proposal explicitly

target a region or area?

Will the proposal significantly

affect some regions or areas more than others?

yes

yes

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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

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How?

Three basic methods1. Qualitative approach (no data and/or no regions

or areas)2. Quantitative approach (no interaction)3. Modeling approach (interaction)

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Does the policy lead to interactions?

SIMULATION OF THE

IMPACT WITH MODELS

STATISTICAL DESCRIPTION

AND PROJECTIONS

QUALITATIVE ASSESSMENT

QUALITATIVE ASSESSMENT

QUALITATIVE ASSESSMENT

Can the region or area be

identified?

Are statistical

data available?

no

no

yes

yesno

yes

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Qualitative methods: three elements

• Spatial distribution of:1. the main problem or driver (exposure)2. the capacity to respond to the problem

implement the policy (sensitivity)3. the actors involved in the policy response

(actors)• The potential territorial impact is the combination

of the three former issues.• Impact = exposure + sensitivity + actors

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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

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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

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Modeling: six models

• When the issue interacts with other issues a model can help to assess impacts

• Six JRC models with a sub-national component1. LUMP: Land Use Modelling Platform2. TRANS-TOOLS: Transport model3. RHOMOLO: Regional Holistic Model4. CAPRI: Common Agricultural Policy Regional IA5. RIAT-Chimere: Air quality scenarios6. Rural Ec Mod: Ex ante Spatial Policy IA

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Thank you for your attention

More info: http://ec.europa.eu/governance/impact/key_docs/key_docs_en.htm

Questions or commentsLewis.dijkstra@ec.europa.eu