27.9.2013   

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

C 280/13

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understands territorial cohesion as a three-dimensional concept that should be taken into account by the European, national, regional and local authorities when implementing policies in their areas of responsibility, regrets that the Commission working document only covers the first of these three aspects, and calls for it to be re-drafted accordingly;

—

recommends, as part of ongoing monitoring of Europe 2020 from the point of view of local and regional authorities, that more attention be paid to the territorial impacts of the strategy;

—

does not agree that a territorial impact assessment should only be carried out when a legislative proposal is explicitly targeted towards specific territories, or risks having a large asymmetric territorial impact, and believes that no policy area should be excluded a priori from territorial impact assessment;

—

calls for territorial impacts to be assessed right from the outset on an equal footing to economic, environmental and social impacts when assessing sectoral policies, not least with regard to their impacts at various local and regional levels, including their financial repercussions and interactions between territorial levels;

—

points to the European Court of Auditors' 2010 recommendation on actively involving the Committee of the Regions in impact assessments at European level, and proposes that ongoing cooperation be developed in this area with the DG for Regional and Urban Policy, Eurostat, the Joint Research Centre and the ESPON programme to identify pragmatic approaches to assessing territorial impacts;

—

undertakes to cooperate closely with the Commission in selecting and carrying out territorial impact assessments, and is also interested in cooperating closely with the EP and the Council to see the principle of territorial impact assessment reflected more clearly in legislative procedures;

—

intends to develop its own strategy for assessing territorial impacts, so as to provide scope to further implement the measures proposed in this opinion.

Rapporteur

Dr Michael SCHNEIDER (DE/EPP), Secretary of State, Sachsen-Anhalt representative to the Federal Government

Reference document

Commission staff working document of 17 January 2013:

Assessing territorial impacts: Operational guidance on how to assess regional and local impacts within the Commission Impact Assessment System

SWD (2013) 3 final

1.

welcomes the Commission's publication in early 2013 of a working document on assessing territorial impacts that sets out operational and methodological guidelines on how to approach the territorial dimension of impact assessment when Commission proposals are being drafted;

2.

also welcomes other recent developments, such as the ESPON report on "Territorial Impact Assessment of Policies and EU Directives" (December 2012), or the Directorate for Impact Assessment recently set up by the European Parliament;

3.

supports the statement in the Territorial Agenda that coordination of different sector-specific strategies to optimise territorial impact and maximise consistency can make such strategies much more successful and help to avoid negative impacts from conflicting measures. Integrated territorial development can strike the right balance between sustainability, competitiveness and social cohesion;

4.

views territorial impact assessment (TIA) as a tool for gauging the territorial repercussions of a policy or legislative proposal on local and regional authorities in view of their objectives and plans for spatial development policy. Early assessment of territorial impacts is meant to ensure that the local and regional level is involved, that spatial development is practicable, relevant and territorially linked, and that funds are deployed effectively. However, national, regional and local powers in land use and development planning are not up for discussion;

5.

points out that, in most policy areas, powers are shared between the EU and the Member States, which means that the principle of subsidiarity applies. A territorial impact assessment as part of a subsidiarity check can constitute a key argument for action at EU level should it demonstrate that this would be of greater benefit than action at Member State or regional level;

6.

underlines that territorial impact assessments can also be useful way of shedding light on potential downsides to EU policy proposals, which is especially important in view of the principle of proportionality. Thus territorial impact assessment is also an important tool for better lawmaking;

7.

draws attention to the fact that a “territorial impact assessment” should make it possible to identify the short-term and long-term consequences of decisions that are planned or being taken. By dividing the relevant tools based on the above classification it will be possible to establish the scope and intensity of impacts more effectively;

8.

therefore sees a close link between territorial impact assessment, assessing impacts in general, and subsidiarity and proportionality auditing of new legislation at European level, and points to the work already carried out by the Europe 2020 Monitoring Platform and the Subsidiarity Monitoring Network;

9.

is mindful of the results of the consultation (1) on the Commission working document run by the Committee of the Regions in February and March 2013;

10.

underlines that, under Article 3 of the TEU and in connection with Articles 174, 175 and 349 of the TFEU, all policy areas are to contribute to the objective of territorial cohesion and to strengthening economic and social cohesion, which is why measures need to be audited in terms of their territorial impacts and the consequences for local and regional authorities need to be assessed; in particular, tangible, effective measures are required to help reduce disparities in regional development and compensate for the geographical and demographic disadvantages facing certain regions;

11.

reiterates that the impact assessments of legislative proposals should study, where necessary, the territorial dimension (local and regional aspects, financial and administrative repercussions for national, regional and local authorities) of the main policy options under consideration; points out that this is a consequence of the obligation to "take account of the need for any burden, whether financial or administrative, falling upon […] regional or local authorities […] to be minimised and commensurate with the objective to be achieved" (Article 5, Protocol (No 2) of the TFEU);

12.

understands territorial cohesion as a three-dimensional concept that should be taken into account by the European, national, regional and local authorities when implementing policies in their areas of responsibility;

Territorial cohesion

13.

regrets that the Commission working document only covers the first of these three aspects, and calls for it to be re-drafted accordingly;

14.

recommends that the Commission pay more attention to assessing territorial impacts in its efforts to further territorial cohesion. Doing so could foster a shared understanding of the issue; improve implementation of cohesion policy; make it more flexible; gear it more effectively to the relevant territorial level; and align it with local and regional circumstances and requirements in accordance with subsidiarity;

15.

believes that the this working document is a sensible contribution to the debate on territorial cohesion policy in the EU, in that it seeks to quantify and qualify the territorial impacts of European policies on regional/local authorities. Territorial cohesion is closely bound up with spatial development policy, whose interplay with sectoral policies should be further tracked and politically managed;

16.

believes that the document should be improved accordingly, so as to stimulate policy debate and position the working document as a framework for all sectoral policies;

17.

underlines the importance of territorial impact assessment for cross-border effects of EU policies at local and regional level. Territorial cohesion is also about new forms of partnership between public, private and civil society stakeholders by way of cooperation and networking at European level. In particular, this includes cross-border, transnational and inter-regional cooperation. In view of this, European Groupings of Territorial Cooperation (EGTCs) can be good laboratories for assessing cross-border territorial impact;

18.

notes the discussions and associated decisions concerning the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) (1999), the EU's Territorial Agenda, and the Leipzig Charter on Sustainable European Cities (May 2007), which, by way of recommendations, create a European framework for EU and Member State action to mobilise regions' and cities' potential for sustainable economic growth and job creation and tackle the challenges posed by demographic trends, global structural shifts and climate change;

19.

welcomes the work of the current Trio Presidency on carrying out the roadmap for implementation of the Territorial Agenda drawn up under the Polish presidency (second semester of 2011);

20.

believes that European spatial development policy needs to be updated to cope with changed spatial conditions, especially in the wake of the last rounds of enlargement and the financial crisis which has had important spatial consequences, and believes that work on the Territorial Agenda 2020 should therefore continue;

21.

calls on the Commission to further develop this working document, paying more attention to aspects of integrated spatial development in Europe;

22.

is concerned that the Europe 2020 strategy in particular fails to account for either the specific characteristics or the areas of responsibility of Europe's cities and regions, as noted in October 2012 in the Third CoR Monitoring Report on Europe 2020, and sees the EU's regional diversity as potential that has not yet been fully exploited, requiring that the Europe 2020 strategy be given a cross-border, territory-specific dimension;

23.

believes that smart, sustainable and inclusive growth can only be achieved if policy measures more clearly reflect the potential for development of, and challenges facing, territories within Europe. To avoid repeating the mistakes of the Lisbon strategy, Europe 2020 should adequately account for the territorial dimension and its potential as a driver of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth;

24.

recommends, as part of ongoing monitoring of Europe 2020 from the point of view of local and regional authorities, that more attention be paid to the territorial impacts of the strategy, making greater use of elements of territorial impact assessment. This recommendation was also raised in a number of submissions to the consultation;

25.

underlines that multilevel governance and partnerships are key to realising territorial cohesion, and that a more clearly place-based approach should be made a priority;

26.

calls on the European Commission, therefore, to address the implications for the Europe 2020 strategy in its working paper;

27.

underlines the need to coordinate the territorial impacts of sectoral policies at EU and Member State level as well as between the EU and Member States, and believes that better coordination of different EU policies in terms of their territorial impacts should be a key objective of territorial impact assessment, at local and regional level in particular;

28.

believes that no policy area should be excluded a priori from territorial impact assessment. The impacts arising as a result of proposed action can only be identified following the completion of an assessment. The absence of any impacts from an assessment also needs to be established, supported by an appropriate analysis of the situation;

29.

believes that territorial impact assessments should be mandatory in the following policy areas with a pronounced territorial dimension: infrastructure; cohesion policy; transport; energy and the environment; the single market; labour markets and social policy; innovation, research and development; agriculture and fisheries; industrial and SME policy; education; urban and regional policies; rural development; services of general interest; water supply and treatment; the promotion of culture and tourism, and all policies that impact on specific types of area;

30.

therefore calls for territorial impacts to be assessed right from the outset on an equal footing to economic, environmental and social impacts when assessing sectoral policies, not least with regard to their impacts at various local and regional levels, including their financial repercussions and interactions between territorial levels;

31.

underlines the key role that territorial impact assessments can play in enhancing coordination of EU sectoral policies to promote territorial cohesion, and believes that no new EU legislation is needed to achieve this and that red tape should be kept to a minimum; moreover, supports the statement in the Territorial Agenda that improved monitoring and evaluation at EU level of territorial development and performance of territorial cohesion efforts should be developed whilst ensuring that the administrative burden on Member States should not increase. The existing assessment, monitoring and evaluation practices and requirements of the EU, including those for Structural and Cohesion Funds and implementation of the Europe 2020 Strategy, should incorporate relevant territorial considerations (2);

32.

continues to support systematic ex-post evaluations of EU legislation as an efficient tool for smart regulation;

33.

considers the methodology and tools proposed for supporting territorial impact assessment (such as ESPON ARTS or QUICKScan) to be sufficient to measure the potential territorial impacts of a proposal at local and regional level;

34.

consequently does not agree that a territorial impact assessment should only be carried out when a legislative proposal is explicitly targeted towards specific territories, or risks having a large asymmetric territorial impact (an "outlier" impact), as proposed in the Commission's working document. Indeed, the only way to assess the real extent of the impact is to carry out ex-ante territorial impact assessments, which is why, in line with the precautionary principle, all legislative proposals should be evaluated as a general rule and only exempted in exceptional and duly justified cases, and not the other way round;

35.

continues to see major shortcomings, not least in the data available at European level on the local (NUTS III) and regional level (NUTS II), when it comes to applying available methods in an efficient and targeted way;

36.

expects further ideas to follow for indicators that would yield a more comprehensive picture of societal wellbeing and territorial impacts, especially in view of the debate on "GDP and beyond"; recalls that indicators are already available through Eurostat, which allow social and environmental issues to be measured;

37.

proposes that experts and representatives from local and regional authorities be given the opportunity to get involved in the workshops planned for the QUICKScan exercise;

38.

underlines the special role of the ESPON programme in boosting EU-wide research into spatial development and promoting exchange of experience in the European Union, and welcomes the publication of a handbook on assessing territorial impacts that builds on the Commission's working document;

39.

feels that it is essential that territorial impact assessment methods be complemented with education and training measures for people in this area;

40.

proposes that the methods and tools used to assess territorial impacts be reviewed after a period of about a year to see whether they are fit for purpose, or need to be adjusted or complemented;

41.

points to the European Court of Auditors' 2010 recommendation on actively involving the Committee of the Regions in impact assessments at European level, and underlines the need to also closely involve both Eurostat and the Joint Research Centre in this process;

42.

believes that this can only happen if territorial impact assessments are fully coordinated within the Commission, so as both to allow territorial concerns to be factored more clearly into general impact assessments, and to create the conditions for ongoing cooperation with other institutions;

43.

therefore takes the view that a non-binding recommendation on assessing territorial impacts — such as this working document — is in no way sufficient to meet the requirements of territorial cohesion and impact assessment;

44.

consequently feels there is a need for close cooperation between the DG for Regional Policy, the Joint Research Centre, the ESPON programme and the Committee of the Regions, to identify pragmatic approaches to assessing territorial impacts;

45.

also considers it necessary for territorial impact assessment measures to be tightly interlocked with the measures proposed by the Commission in late 2012 on enhancing "EU Regulatory Fitness" (3), and notes the separate Committee opinion on this matter;

46.

points out that territorial impact assessment also plays a key role at national level in identifying territorial impacts at an early stage and acting accordingly;

47.

therefore welcomes the commitment made by the Member States under the Territorial Agenda to make greater use of territorial impact assessments themselves and to analyse the consequences on local and regional authorities, and feels that it would make sense for the Member States to regularly share experiences with such assessments amongst themselves and with the specialised services of the EU institutions, in order to ensure that the studies are methodologically consistent and comparable;

48.

urges the Commission to take advantage of cooperation with local and regional authorities to channel consultations towards the interested and affected parties, capitalising on local and regional authorities' experience in order to be able to ask the right questions at the right time, and on their ability to address stakeholders in their own language, as far as possible;

49.

reiterates its call, as already expressed in its opinion on the green paper on territorial cohesion, for a white paper on territorial cohesion in order to more clearly fix the concept of territorial cohesion and its objectives at EU level. This working document is no substitute for such a white paper;

50.

advocates assessing the territorial impacts of not just Commission legislative proposals, but all political initiatives — including communications, green papers and white papers — in view of the potential territorial repercussions of the measures they propose;

51.

calls on the forthcoming EU Presidency to pay particular attention to the territorial aspects of cohesion policy, to the role of a place-based approach, and to the performance of territorial impact assessments;

52.

proposes that territorial impact assessment be regularly discussed in the Network of Territorial Cohesion Contact Points;

53.

further proposes that Open Days also be used to strengthen links between territorial impact assessments at national and European level;

54.

proposes that the Commission charge the DG for Regional and Urban Policy with the task of acting as a central coordination and contact point in the Commission for territorial impact assessments and of representing this issue on the Impact Assessment Board. This central contact point should also be responsible for checking the Commission's work programme and impact assessment programme to see whether any territorial impact assessments are necessary, and, if so, to launch such assessments (in cooperation with the DG responsible);

55.

undertakes to cooperate closely with the Commission in selecting and carrying out territorial impact assessments, as already provided for in the protocol on cooperation between the two institutions; Commission services can request the support of the Committee when carrying out impact assessments;

56.

proposes that the Commission agree on close cooperation between the partners especially involved in territorial impact assessment (EUROSTAT, the Joint Research Centre, ESPON and the Committee of the Regions), not least so as to settle the future division of labour and tasks when running this process;

57.

calls on the Commission to report, no later than in the next Report on Economic, Social and Territorial Cohesion in early 2014, on how coordination of EU policies to promote territorial cohesion and to better account for the territorial dimension of EU policy can be strengthened through the consistent use of territorial impact assessments;

58.

calls for experts and representatives of local and regional authorities to be consistently involved in drawing up and carrying out territorial impact assessments;

59.

calls for training modules to be run on the concept and application of territorial impact assessments, and asks the Commission to earmark the necessary funds;

60.

calls for the ESPON programme to be continued and for a clearer focus on key areas of research, which undoubtedly include the further development of models for assessing territorial impacts to be made more visible across the EU institutions and for the results to be mainstreamed across existing and developing policies as appropriate;

61.

calls on the Commission, in their report on the implementation of impact assessments, to provide information on the implementation and results of territorial impact assessments in a separate chapter;

62.

calls for assessment of territorial impacts to be extended, not least to cover the Europe 2020 strategy and the European Semester recommendations, and reasserts its call for the inclusion of a chapter on the European Semester's regional dimension in the Commission's Annual Growth Survey;

63.

calls for appropriate measures and procedures to be provided for to address asymmetric territorial impacts identified by a territorial impact assessment, such measures and procedures guaranteeing the involvement of locally affected players and especially local and regional authorities;

64.

underlines that the principle of multilevel governance and partnership are key to achieving territorial cohesion and a place-based approach. The Committee of the Regions will continue to advocate that these principles be fully realised, as called for in consultation by all stakeholders;

65.

reaffirms the role it can play supporting the Commission in assessing impacts, and proposes that the agreements mentioned in the protocol on cooperation between the European Commission the Committee of the Regions also be used for cooperation in assessing territorial impacts;

66.

therefore proposes that ongoing cooperation be developed in this area with the DG for Regional and Urban Policy, Eurostat, the Joint Research Centre and the ESPON programme;

67.

is also interested in cooperating closely with the European Parliament and the Council to see the principle of territorial impact assessment reflected more clearly in legislative procedures; in particular calls on the Parliament to authorise its impact assessment directorate to become active in upstream impact assessment during the pre-legislative phase; notes that amendments made to legislative proposals by the European Parliament or the Council may have a significant impact on local and regional authorities and their territorial consequences should therefore be assessed. This would help to increase and improve the use of impact assessments in decision-making processes;

68.

is also prepared to cooperate closely with other partners on this issue, such as European associations of local and regional authorities, research institutes and trade associations;

69.

calls on the Commission to take measures to increase understanding of the methodology and opportunities for use of territorial impact assessments among representatives of local and regional authorities through the use of appropriate channels such as the Covenant of Mayors Programme and Erasmus for Mayors, and is prepared to take part in carrying out these measures;

70.

considers it important that more attention be paid to the territorial impacts of the Europe 2020 strategy as part of ongoing monitoring of the strategy from the point of view of local and regional authorities; in this context, proposes that a regional progress indicator be developed for more nuanced assessment of the strategy's territorial impact, based on regional statistics; also calls on the Commission to use territorial impact assessment as a tool, particularly in view of the strategy's midterm review;

71.

intends to develop its own strategy for assessing territorial impacts (possibly as part of a general strategy for impact assessment and taking into account strategic environmental assessment results), so as to provide scope to further implement the measures proposed in this opinion.