As the next programming period approaches, the exchanges between the participating Member and Partner States, organised in the so-called Joint Working Group to shape the next ESPON programme, are intensifying. From the beginning, more than a year ago, the process has been driven by a strong commitment from all involved to reflect on the lessons learned from current and past experiences to further develop the programme in a changing environment and make it more effective and efficient.

One of the main challenges is to bring the programme even closer to the needs of policy-makers and other stakeholders. This will be achieved by reinforcing the dialogue and exchange between policy-makers and researchers and academia, which will also help to ensure the usefulness of the evidence produced by ESPON. One of the lessons learned during this programming period was that, to achieve ESPON’s mission to support evidence-based policy-making or better informed policy-making, the mere provision of territorial evidence is not enough. Furthermore, to ensure the use of and constructive work with ESPON’s evidence in the various stages of the policy cycle, the evidence has to meet the needs of policy-makers: it has to be understandable, accessible and specifically tailored to their requirements. To make this happen, the active involvement of researchers in the implementation of ESPON activities and in dialogue with policy-makers, policy enablers and researchers is crucial.