Portrait of the Regions State of Play Teodora Brandmuller teodora.brandmueller@cec.eu.int

Content of my talk Background Latest developments State of the play Future plans

History of the project October 2005 In 1993 the first three volume of the series were published covering 12 MS By 2001 all Member States and candidate countries are covered except MT and CY Update becomes necessary At the beginning of the 1990s, the Directorate General for Regional Policies, in conjunction with Eurostat and the national statistical institutes of the Member States, launched a series of profiles of the regions in the then 12 Member States. On the basis of a standardised set of indicators, a number of descriptive texts were written about specific aspects of each region. Graphs, tables, maps and photographs completed the coverage. In 1993, 3 volumes of these profiles were published covering the 12 Member States. . By 2001 all Member States and Candidate countries were covered with the exception of Malta, Cyprus. Between 1993 and 2001 some 11 different volumes have appeared it was one of Eurostat’s prestige publications - a series of hard-cover books.

Portrait of the Regions Website Milestones 2002-2003 Technical development of the website 2003-2004 Text creation and revision 2005 Final validation and publication Take a look! In 2002 the decision was made to update the profiles and create a web based version of the Portraits. The contract with the website developer had been completed satisfactorily by 2003 and the site was ready to receive the texts. The text revision/creation was contracted to a private company and NSIs were asked to validate the texts. Several unforeseen difficulties – new NUTS breakdown, new dissemination policy, new IT environment at Eurostat, new person responsible in the team – appeared which lengthened the process considerably. Nevertheless, a huge amount of work has been put into the project already and despite some shortcomings, we have decided that the project should be completed.

Lessons learned Underestimated (human and financial) resources More intensive co-operation with NSIs More emphasize on Internet specific solutions

The website in numbers Portraying 25 countries, 340 regions More than 600 images (mainly maps) 3400 html pages Numerous contributors, validators, editors

Future plans New environment New possibilities free dissemination Oracle based portal etc. New possibilities interactive maps, graphs, etc. Next step: design, concept and feasibility study In 2004 Eurostat started a free dissemination policy, this reform makes it possible to create a more informative site portraying the EU regions. The migration to an Oracle based website also opens new opportunities in developing a more interactive, user- and update-friendly website. The new site could be linked to the free dissemination database; it could provide interactive graphs and charts. A connection to the map database could lead to interactive maps.

Thanks for listening ! Any Questions ?