ESPON 2013 

ESPON 2013 (European Spatial Planning Observation Network) is a research programme set up to support European territorial development and spatial planning. ESPON 2013 continues the work of ESPON 2006, which formed part of the EU's Interreg Community initiatives during the previous Structural Funds programming period. Nearly 30 separate research projects were carried out under the ESPON 2006 programme, involving over 100 research institutions across Europe.

The new ESPON 2013 programme is linked to the European Territorial Cooperation objective during the 2007–2013 Structural Funds programming period. The programme is designed to support territorial development and policy at EU level and in the Member States with the help of research, data and networking. The programme will include several research projects carried out in partnership with European research institutions in the fields of European territorial development, planning and policy.

The ESPON 2013 programme will include four priorities:

• Thematic research on territorial development and planning
• Targeted analysis of different types of territories
• Data, indicators and research methods
• Development of partnerships, and sharing and capitalisation of research data.

These priorities have been selected in order to ensure that the research activities facilitate territorial planning and development cooperation, which will be deepened and extended to the candidate countries, and that they support the preparations for the following Structural Funds programming period. All 27 EU Member States and Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland will participate in the implementation of the programme. Future candidate countries have the opportunity to participate in the ESPON 2013 programme.

The EU funding for ESPON 2013 is 34 million euros for the period of 2007–2013. The Member States will contribute just under 13 million euros, bringing the total budget of the programme to some 47 million euros.

Further information

The final reports of the completed programmes (ESPON 2006), new project launches, calls for proposals and programme documents are published on the ESPON website.

The ESPON Contact Point (ECP) in Finland is University of Joensuu.

The contact persons are professor Heikki Eskelinen(firstname.surname@joensuu.fi) and researcher Timo Hirvonen (firstname.surname@joensuu.fi). ECP inform Finnish research institutes and regional actors about ESPON projects and results.