“The accelerating globalisation and new emerging markets will have major impacts on Europe and its territory, cities and regions”, states the freshly in print Europe in the World Report of ESPON, the European Observation Network on Territorial Development and Cohesion.

The ESPON poster tries to attract people’s attentions with some carefully selected maps and words allowing a quick first understanding what ESPON is about.

In the ESPON Briefing 2 a variety of current European trends are analysed in order to come to a better understanding a number of factors which need to be taken into account in relation to the Lisbon Strategy. The territorial diversity of factors like the global economy, regional imbalances, service sector specialisation, transportation, governance, demography and cultural innovation are presented so as to support a diversified assessment of the current situation.

Until the Seminar in Nijmegen, every ESPON seminar was followed by a "guidance paper" elaborated by the coordinating projects: ESPON 3.1 and ESPON 3.2.