Spatial Foresight Illustrations
Spatial Foresight staff members produce different forms of illustrations. These illustrations are the graphic representation of various projects made available to a wider public.
In 2011, the European Commission presented the Social Business Initiative (SBI) which established an EU level action plan with concrete measures to establish a favourable environment for social enterprises. Spatial Foresight led a study assessing the impact of the SBI for the European Commission DG Employment, Social Affairs & Inclusion. The study was conducted in cooperation with EURICSE and ECSF.
The infographic describes the study's findings in a nutshell. The full report is available for download here.
Demographic changes have a major impact on the effectiveness of regional development policies. Whether a region in Europe is shrinking or growing determines its policy need. Also the pace of demographic change is decisive. This is why they are of high interest for European, national and regional policy makers.
Population potential is the total number of persons living within a certain distance of a given place. In utilising population data collected from censuses and registers for the European Commission, Spatial Foresight based the given place on around 7 million 1km2 grid cells. The maps show changes in the number of people living within 50km of each cell for 10 year periods between 1961 and 2011. For the calculation 50 km as a proxy for a daily commuting distance was used.
Illustrating demographic structures with population potentials provides unique advantages compared to more common maps showing trends at the level of municipalities. In common maps, the size of municipalities heavily influences the visual presentation of developments. They give the impression that e.g. there is more intense demographic polarisation in Northern France than in Belgium. This is because French municipalities are much smaller than Belgian ones. Population potentials neutralise these differences. They make it possible to focus on demographic trends, rather than observing the combined effect of municipal delineation logics and population change.
Presenting demographic developments within a daily commuting distance do overcome this risk of misinterpretation and are more relevant from a regional policy perspective. A local redistribution of population between two neighbouring municipalities often just reflects new residential preferences. However, a significant change in the total population within commuting range implies that their economic and social situation has evolved more profoundly.
Even though measuring demographic developments with population potentials provides many advantages, they’re not without drawbacks. The current map uses 50 km Euclidean distance as a proxy for daily commuting distance. It does not take into account the variables quality of transport infrastructure, congestion and obstacles such as mountain ranges, stretches of water or political borders. A better solution would have been to calculate a travel time distance from each point. However, when analysing historical data, one would then have to consider the available road or rail network for each year.
The gif animation of decennial changes in population potentials synthesises a large number of trends at different scales across Europe. Between 1961 and 1971, one is first struck by the intensity of population growth across a large part of Europe. However, there are some significant exceptions, mainly located at the outskirts of the continent, e.g. the Iberian Peninsula, northern Sweden and Finland outside the largest cities, Greece, the Italian Mezzogiorno, northern Scotland and western Ireland.
In the following decade, rates of growth and decline tend to be more moderate. The only exception is Spain and Portugal, where urban-rural polarisation continues with almost unchanged intensity. In Scotland, northern parts actually grow, while there is demographic decline in the Glasgow region and stagnation around Edinburgh. In large parts of Europe, including its core parts, cities and their rural hinterland tend to experience more contrasted demographic developments.
After 1981, demographic growth and decline accelerate but tend to follow the same geographic pattern as previously, e.g. in the Nordic countries, in Eastern Germany and in south-eastern Europe. This acceleration continues after 1991. However, one then in addition observes nation-wide population decline in the Baltic countries, Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia. These trends are accentuated after 2001 in the Baltic countries (except Tallinn) and in Bulgaria. At the same time, a process of intense urban-rural polarisation starts in Turkey, while demographic growth now occurs across the entire territory in large parts of Spain, western and southern France. The demographic dynamism of Ireland between 2001 and 2011 is also striking.
Over the entire period, the population potential decreases steadily in some remote and rural areas, e.g. along the axis running from Lorraine to Auvergne in France or in remote parts of northern Scandinavia. It seems that efforts to mitigate depopulation in these areas can, at best, postpone trends that may appear as inevitable and alleviate their social implications. A better awareness of these trends may help to design policies to manage demographic decline or, when possible, to stabilise population at current levels.
The EGTC (European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation) is a legal EU cohesion policy instrum ent for territorial cooperation introduced in 2006 by adopting Regulation (EC) No 1082/2006. Until December 2017, 69 EGTCs have been established whereas one grouping was dissolved during 2017. Currently there are 68 EGTCs. They may be founded for various purposes and can thus be flexibly applied in different contexts as regards member constellations, thematic foci, or different legal backgrounds in the respective EU Member States and under inclusion of neighbouring countries.
The map illustrates the territorial dimension of the EGTCs founded until December 2017. For depicting EGTCs with respect to their territorial diversity it is useful to differentiate three types. violet depicted are cross-border EGTCs. This is the most frequent type. These EGTCs are most often founded by sub-regional public authorities. Their territorial extents vary however significantly. Transnational EGTCs (hatched) represent the second type. They do not require direct territorial proximity and usually have members from at least three countries. The third type represents so-called network EGTCs (depicted by symbols). Depending on their thematic focus, types of members and objectives, the members can be found in rather distant areas of the EU.
Information and publications based upon Spatial Foresight’s activities related to the EGTC instrument are available online:
BBSR study on disseminating and deepening the experience of EGTC (in German)
Guidelines for the establishment of an EGTC (in German, English and Polish)
Spatial Foresight Brief on potential and limits of the EGTC instrument (in English)
How does partnership in 2014-20 ERDF programmes function?
The partnership principle has been strengthened in ERDF and other ESIF programmes with the adoption of the 2014-2020 regulatory framework. Article 5 of the Common Provision Regulation (CPR) makes it compulsory for each ESIF programme to organise a partnership at all programing stages. A European Code of Conduct has been set up to support EU Member States to ensure the inclusion of different types of stakeholders. Even though the partnership is not completely new for ERDF programmes, more importance has been given to stakeholder involvement and influence.
The infographic illustrates the findings of the DG Regio report on this topic - "Implementation of the partnership principle and multi-level governance in 2014-2020 ESI Funds".
Policy coordination has been a concern for European policy-making. With the introduction of the place-based approach this has gradually found it’s way into EU regulation. The Common Provisions Regulation (CPR) introduced for the 2014 European Structural and Investment Funds (ESI Funds) already supports better coherence and coordination among different ESI Funds. The regulation itself includes more mechanisms for better coordination between funds. One of these mechanisms is the possibility of multi-fund programmes in the 2014-2020 period. Multi-fund programmes combine different ESI-funds. The common regulatory framework has a clear step in improving the coordination and governance across funds. This framework encouraged the use of multi-fund programming.
The table above has been based on the adopted programmes available at the Commission’s webpages and the adopted Partnership Agreements by July 2015. This includes all Partnership Agreements and a fair share of the programmes under the Investment Growth and Jobs and European Territorial Cooperation Goals. In total we expect 490 programmes of which 76 ETC programmes. 110 programmes will be multi-fund programmes, of which 5 are ETC programmes, combining ERDF and funding for EU-neighbouring countries (ENI and/or IPA).
The uptake of the possibility of integrated programmes differs by Member State. Multi-fund programmes are the dominant programme type in France, Greece, Poland and Portugal. Most other Member States won’t make use of the possibility to combine different ESI funds and will have single fund programmes.
Most of the multi-fund programmes will be a combination of the ERDF and ESF, followed by combining the ESF with the Youth Employment Initiative (YEI).
