Joep Crompvoets
Professor
KU Leuven - Public Governance Institute
Belgium

Biography
Joep Crompvoets is associate professor at KU Leuven Public Governance Institute (Belgium) and Secretary-General of EuroSDR - a European spatial data research network linking national mapping agencies with research institutes and universities for the purpose of applied research. He has been involved in several projects related to the development of the INSPIRE Directive and SDIs around the world (e.g. Kosovo).

Abstract
Implementing INSPIRE in the EU Member States: Analysing the 2013 Country Monitoring Reports

The findings of the INSPIRE mid term review indicate the extent to which the implementation of the INSPIRE Directive has now entered a new phase as the emphasis shifts from the European Commission to the 28 Member States. The country reports submitted to the Commission in 2013 were an important input to this review as they give an excellent qualitative overview of the progress that has been made by each of the Member States with respect to INSPIRE implementation. With this in mind the presentation will analyse some of the main features that emerge from these reports. The starting point for this analysis is the recently published book by the authors (Masser and Crompvoets 2015). The overall impression given by the country reports is that the implementation of the Directive is well under way and that the necessary steps are being taken by the Member States to create a European-wide Spatial Data Infrastructure, although marked differences exist between countries in both the speed of implementation and content. A great deal has been achieved so far but substantial demands are likely to be placed on the Member States over the next few years. It also considers the readiness of the member states to carry out these tasks. It is felt that the presentation will strongly contribute to the objective of the INSPIRE-GWF Conference to strengthen the dialogue and discussions for the promotion of geospatial technologies with all stakeholders while enabling networking of professionals at the global scale.