INSPIRE FORUM

Background

The INSPIRE Directive 2007/2/EC was published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 25 April 2007, and entered into force on 15 May 2007. INSPIRE lays down general rules for the establishment of an infrastructure for spatial information in Europe, for the purposes of environmental policies and policies or activities which may have a direct or indirect impact on the environment.

The open and transparent participatory approach by which the European Commission has been developing the INSPIRE Directive and its Implementing Rules has greatly contributed to the acceptance of the proposed legislative measures by the Member States. This approach, which consisted of a combined informal, bottom-up approach and a formal, representational approach, was adopted since the early days of INSPIRE. This proved to be powerful, and an important side-effect was that many national Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) activities came to being even before the Directive was adopted, as a result of the networking effect that INSPIRE brought about. With the adoption of the INSPIRE Directive, and the start of the implementation phase in May 2009, there is a need to extend the existing communication mechanisms.

Member States assume the co-ordination of stakeholders at the national levels while communicating with the Commission through nominated points of contact. Issues related to the formal adoption of INSPIRE Implementing Rules will be addressed by the Commission, hereby assisted through the INSPIRE Regulatory Committee.

The INSPIRE Forum  complements the above co-ordination structures by bringing the above actors together in a forum open to the multiple societal stakeholders. The INSPIRE Forum provides the opportunity to  all the INSPIRE community  to share experiences and best practices while fostering the co-ordination of stakeholder actions. It is  a mechanism through which the INSPIRE community can co-operate, share a common vision and organise themselves to collectively and individually contribute towards the shared vision: implement INSPIRE in a successful way.

The Forum provides a platform for constructive dialogue on issues related to the implementation of the INSPIRE as well as on its relationship with other Community and global initiatives.

SDI Unit Involvement:

The INSPIRE Forum comprises the on-line community network platform and face-to-face INSPIRE meetings, workshops and conferences. The SDI unit is actively involved in all aspects of the INSPIRE Forum.

We organise the annual INSPIRE conference, exhibition and workshops. SDI unit staff have also designed and implemented the social network environment the hosts the INSPIRE Forum and actively contribute and participate in forum discussions. Join us!