Towards the development of a Geographic Information Policy for the European Commission

The paper discusses recent developments which have led to the formulation of a policy for data acquisition, use, and dissemination of geographic information for the European Com-mission. This is potentially a major development in Europe not only because the EC is still the single major user of pan-European data, but also because it may have important second-ary impacts at national and sub-national level by setting an example that other organisations may adapt or follow. With this in mind, the paper presents the key principles of such policy and analyses the potential implications that its implementation may have for access to public sector information across Europe, seen by many as a key issue in developing an Information-based Society. The paper is organized in four sections, providing the background, discussing the limitations of the current framework through two case-studies of data access in the Euro-pean Commission, presenting the key features of the proposed policy, and concluding with a summary of the priority issues respectively. 1