Challenges and opportunities for territorial cohesion in Europe

This report assembles a series of separate scientific contributions to the European Commission’s Ninth Report on Economic, Social and Territorial Cohesion. The report includes seven short research papers providing background and insight under three broad topics with relevance to European regional and urban policy: Urbanisation and regional economic trends; Transport and digital accessibility; and Sectoral analyses (renewable energy and tourism). Each short paper documents a novel research or analysis based on the most recent data available, thus providing up-to-date and timely evidence on issues with a strong territorial dimension. Although covering a very diverse range of topics, the contributions articulate interrelated challenges and opportunities to promote territorial cohesion in Europe. These are related to, for example, the increasing urbanisation and implications for transport and mobility, population decline in rural areas, regional economic convergence/divergence trends, the improving access to broadband in the EU, the potential role of rural areas for the green transition and tourism as a heterogeneous but overall resilient industry contributing to many EU regional economies. An efficient Cohesion Policy should envisage targeted, place-based investments that consider these and other challenges and opportunities.