The ESPON European and Macro-regional Territorial Monitoring Tool — MRS. ESPON —aims at providing a practical and operational online platform to continuously observe the spatial development trends and patterns taking place in Europe and its macro-regions. Concerning the evaluation of the policy achievements of macro-regions and the monitoring of achievement of goals within priority areas, the European Commission provides a biannual assessment of the four macro-regions, and the four macro-regions have their individual processes to monitor and evaluate achievements. This tool provides the European, macro-regional, national and regional policy makers and other stakeholders with complementary territorial information, data, maps, graphs, analytical features and short reports. A particularity of this tool is that it brings together information from different data sources, such as the ESPON Database, Eurostat, National Statistical Offices, Worldbank, OECD, ILO, UNCTAD, and other regional collaboration partners.

Reading and interpreting the quantitative statistical information in the light of policy objectives and aims shall help to

• monitor spatial development trends in the four macro-regions
• identify development opportunities and territorial challenges,
• to better understand the diversity and position (benchmarking) of regions in the heterogeneous European context.
• to position the four macro-regions in a European perspective by providing narratives for MRS in the 2021-2027 EU Cohesion Policy Objectives.

Furthermore, the platform gives an overview of the different thematic foci in the four macro-regions, and provides numerous links to relevant webpages or further information on data sets or macro-regional activities.

Several indicators of the tool are automatically updated via web services linking to the data sources. The rest of data will be regularly updated. Stakeholders are also welcome to contact ESPON directly through a dedicated email address ([email protected]) or via the online form for any additional information, proposal for additions or to request specific data sets.