2026-06-30 –, Auditorium
Europe is undergoing a significant transformation in its policy landscape, driven by the rapid pace of technological advancements, increasing geopolitical pressures, and growing concerns regarding digital sovereignty. Concurrently, the Competitiveness Compass has introduced a simplification agenda aimed at streamlining the regulatory environment and reducing the administrative burden on both businesses and public administrations. The Data Union Strategy, adopted in late 2025, prioritises initiatives that facilitate data access, enhance data reuse for artificial intelligence, and safeguard EU data sovereignty.
Within this complex context, the European Commission has proposed a major revision of the INSPIRE Directive, which has been in force since 2007, as part of a broader package of initiatives known as the Environmental Omnibus, designed to simplify environmental legislation. Over the years, INSPIRE has established a unique and comprehensive framework for public sector geospatial data sharing in the EU, serving as a global benchmark for similar Spatial Data Infrastructure initiatives. The proposed revision, currently under negotiation with the Parliament and Council, seeks to modernise and streamline the Directive, aligning it with today’s political and technological landscape that has undergone considerable changes since the Directive's inception two decades ago. This modernisation effort involves simplifying various legal requirements and aligning them with those outlined in the Open Data Directive and its Implementing Act on high-value datasets, which establish an open data regime for several public sector datasets, including geospatial data.
The talk will provide a retrospective analysis of INSPIRE's achievements and lessons learned to date, offer a comprehensive overview of the current European policy framework governing geospatial data sharing, and examine the evolution of INSPIRE, covering its past, present, and future developments, while highlighting specific opportunities for stakeholders and identifying key challenges that need to be addressed.
- INSPIRE Directive (2007): https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2007/2/oj
- Open Data Directive (2019): http://data.europa.eu/eli/dir/2019/1024/oj
- INSPIRE evaluation (2022): https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52022SC0195
- Implementing Regulation on high-value datasets (2023): http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg_impl/2023/138/oj
- Proposal for revision of the INSPIRE Directive (2025): https://link.europa.eu/fHNt4H
Marco Minghini obtained his BSc, MSc and PhD degrees in Environmental and Geomatics Engineering at Politecnico di Milano. Since August 2018 he works as a Scientific Project Officer at the European Commission – Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Ispra, Italy, supporting EU policies on geospatial data sharing (including the INSPIRE and Open Data Directives) and digital sovereignty (including open source software). He is a researcher, educator and advocate on open source software and open data. He became an OSGeo Charter Member in 2015. From 2018 to 2021 he was a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Open Geospatial Data, Software and Standards. Since 2022 he is the Chair of ISPRS Intercommission Working Group “Open innovation in Geospatial science and Remote Sensing”. He is a regular participant and presenter at global and local FOSS4G events. He was the Secretary of FOSS4G Europe 2015, a member of the Local Organising Team of FOSS4G 2022 and a Co-chair of the Academic Track at FOSS4G 2022 and FOSS4G Europe 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026.