Territorial Impact Assessment: Check the impact of your policy before it checks you

Territory matters for competitiveness and cohesion of the EU, countries and regions. How much it matters can be assessed. Territorial Impact Assessment (TIA) can be applied to all policies that potentially affect the territory. Whether or not a TIA should be carried out depends on how significantly the analysed policy is expected to impact a given territory. When the need to conduct a TIA is confirmed, the choice of the appropriate method depends on the degree of territorialisation of the planned intervention, available time, financial resources and data.
The participatory lab focused on discussing the reasons and the methods that could be used to assess the territorial impact at different levels of governance: European (EC/JRC, CoR, ESPON), national (NL,PL) and regional (all). The participants were guided through the different stages of impact analysis. We discussed how crucial was to identify the instruments by which the policy would be implemented, as these instruments would determine the shape and effects of the policy. The better they were defined, the more precise the TIA could be. Policies can influence various territories, e.g. cities or villages, in different ways. This, in turn, makes it necessary to take into account the asymmetric impact, its scale and its direction (positive/negative). To successfully and efficiently perform a TIA, it is essential to ensure the availability of key statistical indicators at various administrative levels. It is worth noting that if TIA is implemented relatively early in the policy design, it can provide policy planners with essential insights crucial for better decision making.