ESPON 2020 Programme

The ESPON 2020 Programme aims at promoting and fostering a European territorial dimension in development and cooperation by providing evidence, knowledge transfer and policy learning to public authorities and other policy actors at all levels. It shall continue the consolidation of a European Territorial Observatory Network and expand the provision and policy use of pan-European, comparable, systematic and reliable territorial evidence.

The main objective of the ESPON 2020 Cooperation Programme is to support the reinforcement of the effectiveness of EU Cohesion Policy and other sectoral policies and programmes under the European Structural Investment (ESI) funds as well as national and regional territorial development policies, through the production, dissemination and promotion of territorial evidence covering the entire territory of the 27 EU Members States, as well as the 4 Partner States of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.

The programme is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) with a contribution of €41.3 million for the period 2014-2020.

Under the new ESPON 2020 Programme, a European Grouping for Territorial Cooperation (EGTC) will be contracted to implement the 2014-2020 programme. The ESPON EGTC will be the single beneficiary of this programme and will make use of service contracts to implement the programme accordingly.  

The Cooperation Programme is built around the following five specific objectives that will guide the implementation of the ESPON 2020 Programme:

• Specific Objective 1: Enhanced production of territorial evidence through applied research and analyses.
• Specific Objective 2: Upgraded knowledge transfer and use of analytical user support.
• Specific Objective 3: Improved territorial observation and tools for territorial analyses.
• Specific Objective 4: Wider outreach and uptake of territorial evidence.
• Specific Objective 5: Leaner, and more effective and efficient implementation provisions and more proficient programme assistance.

Click he​re​​ for more information on the ESPON 2020 Programme. 

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