National GEOs

EuroGEO plays a crucial role as an umbrella coordination initiative, effectively promoting best practices, tools, coordination, and the success of National GEOs in engaging users. This collaboration would result in mutual benefits, as National GEOs can utilise the tools promoted by EuroGEO to transform solutions offered to national users into operational services. Conversely, it would also enable the sharing of new practices and insights to benefit the entire community.

It becomes essential to integrate best practices from national GEOs and map potential contributions. This will prevent the oversight of relevant activities, strengthen existing cooperation, and foster further collaborations and integration of different disciplines, approaches, visions, and motivations. Additionally, it will facilitate the sharing of data, products, services, best practices, success stories, and methodologies such as co-design. By promoting networking, engagement, and the creation of synergies, EuroGEO can contribute more consistently to the European participation in the Group on Earth Observations (GEO).

National GEOs are National contributions to GEO. For now, there is no formal institutional engagement between the National GEOs and EuroGEO. While the role and institutional function of National GEOs need to be better assessed, it is commonly accepted that such structures, under optimal conditions, might have an important contribution from different points of view as in the following:

Acquire a comprehensive mapping of the existing national capacities.
Support consultation and priority ranking process for meeting national and cross-border needs.
Report on best paradigms of collaboration between users and value adding industry for meeting policy and decision making needs across the country.
Coordinate and foster the dialogue at national level and influence the decisions for the engagement of the MS in flagships, financial supporting instruments, partnerships within EU, Private Public cooperation schemes, and cross-border regional development funds (e.g. AF-EU development funds, Prima, Agriculture Partnership, Interreg).

Moreover, in alignment with their mandate, National GEOs may support the GEO implementation post 2025 by:

(i) Contributing to the systematic collection of MS data;
(ii) Fostering the openness of data;
(iii) Ensuring seamless monitoring of SDGs;
(iv) Promoting collaborations between stakeholders within and across the MS;
(v) Evolving data collections and data exploitation into Earth intelligence;
(vi) Catalyzing the MSs' participation in the uptake of EuroGEO by striving easier access to national capacities, data, funds, user practices and paradigm shifts.

By reinforcing the coordination between National GEOs and EuroGEO, it can offer a unique framework to reinforce cooperation between the European and National level, and between Member States and can help “establishing a clear mandate between national and EU levels”, which is “crucial to prevent duplication of efforts and ensure efficient collaboration” (JRC report).

By stimulating cooperation and engagement with National GEOs - through e.g. Action Groups, EuroGEO workshops and related events - EuroGEO strives to organise a vibrant European EO community,breaking new grounds and opens breakthrough areas for collaborations between the involved stakeholders by exploiting skills and capacities at national level.

It strengthens the coordinated and optimal use of MS funding, in compliance to MS strategy and in complement to the EC and International funding support through e.g. Horizon Europe, Regional Cohesion Funds, Widening and/or Interreg Med Funds, IFIs, and the GEO and Regional GEO work programs.

(i) Identifying the systematically collected data and metadata at MS level;
(ii) Removing the barriers so as to ensure open access and free use of the national data spaces and observational networks;
(iii) Proposing strategies to fill in data and metadata gaps;
(iv) Boosting the visibility of MS INSPIRE datasets through the GEO knowledge Hub.

In conclusion the collaboration with the National GEOs is beneficial, leveraging EuroGEO’s capacity across sectors (e.g. through Action Groups) in the support of national, European and GEO post 2025 strategies.

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