Environmental data: Commission welcomes agreement on INSPIRE system

The European Commission welcomes the agreement reached last night by the European Parliament and the Council in Conciliation on a directive creating INSPIRE - Infrastructure for spatial information in Europe. INSPIRE will strengthen the knowledge base for environmental policy and make it more accessible to citizens, stakeholders and decision-makers. The directive will cover a very wide range of spatial data ranging from basic mapping information, such as geographical names and administrative units, to key environmental information such as emissions, environmental quality and location of protected sites. At present, this type of data is not always available, nor is it always consistent enough for designing and implementing environmental policy. The new directive sets obligations on what the public authorities of the Member States do with the data they collect. It was proposed by the Commission in 2004 but some Member States had difficulties with provisions requiring their public authorities to take a more open approach to the data they hold. The directive will now be formally adopted early next year and the Member States will then have two years to transpose it into national law.