Territorial Impact Assessment - European context and the case of Czechia

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to critically review recent EU level debates on territorial impact assessment, which serves as a tool to improve the understanding of uneven territorial impacts of the EU sectoral policies. The paper also seeks to elicit (1) which European countries employ territorial impact assessment when designing various national policies and (2) how this tool is used in different governance environments. Particular attention is paid to the case of Czechia. The paper elaborates upon the state-of-the-art tools used on a national level and analyses the motivation of actors on regional and local levels to use such tools in their decision-making process. The research shows that EU member states that employ this tool can be categorized into four groups, for instance, depending on whether they enrich other impact assessments tools by territorial aspects, or whether they focus coherence of regional development strategies and sectoral strategies. Territorial impact assessment is not implemented in Czechia, although recent years have witnessed an upsurge of interest concerning territorial aspects of investments.