Public Geodata

Geographic Data Technologies

Timeline

March 30th

Consultation process closes for the first of the Implementing Rules Drafts, on Metadata for Geospatial Information

Links to the draft and background detail at ec-gis.org

February 12th: Final vote on INSPIRE in plenary Strasbourg

INSPIRE has now become law and will be on the statute books in 8 weeks.

November 21: Conciliation preliminarily

Start of conciliation.

October/November: more informal trialogues

September 26: 1st Informal Trialogue

Commission, Council and a delegation from the Parliament will have a first informal meeting.

September 20: Coreper

The permanent representatives of each country are secretly meeting in the Council.

September 8: Working Party on the Environment

The Working Party on the Environment is secretly meeting in the Council.

June 12th: Vote in plenary in Strasbourg

The plenary vote in Strasbourg was planned for Monday 12 June and happened on the 13th.

In the INSPIRE Second Reading the European Parliament strongly backed the ENVI Committee’s position and the rapporteur’s amendments.

See also the Open Letter Second Reading

June 7th: Deadline for amendments

The deadline for amendments in plenary is Wednesday 7 June at 18:00.

April 2nd: Inspire Conference in Sweden

  • European InterParliamentary Conference on INSPIRE, Sweden: Jack Dangermond, the founder of ESRI, the biggest vendor of proprietary Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software, is giving a keynote speech at this conference.

March 21st 2006: Vote in ENVI committee

  • Date of committee vote in Brussels

The Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee (ENVI) was responsible for setting out the Parliament’s position on the Directive. At its meeting on the 21st March 2006 ENVI decided to reject many of the amendments introduced by the Council, which removed public right to view data and constrained the public’s right to discover that it exists via intellectual property exemption clauses. The Committee’s suggestions will go up for a full vote in plenary of the European Parliament

See also the first Open Letter that Public Geodata sent to the members of the Environment Committee before the vote.

February 23rd: Deadline for tabling amendments in ENVI committee

  • Deadline for amendments: 23 February, 6 p.m.

February 21st: Inspire directive discussed at the ENVI committee meeting

  • The ENVI Committee will examine a draft recommendation on the infrastructure for spatial information in the Community (INSPIRE) (Frederika Brepoels, EPP-ED, Belgium).
    • INSPIRE is designed to set up and operate an infrastructure for spatial information in Europe so as to streamline spatial information flows, information collection and coordination between stakeholders across sectors and across levels of government.
    • It seeks to make existing data infrastructures and environmental data more comparable and clearer to understand at EU level.
    • The Parliament delivered its first reading on 7 June 2005 and adopted 49 amendments.
    • The rapporteur considers that the Council has not taken on board Parliament’s views on the most important issues.
    • She underlines that free access must be guaranteed for search and view services. She also wants to exclude intellectual property rights from the list of exceptions that would restrict access to environmental information.
    • Deadline for amendments: 23 February, 6 p.m. Adoption in ENVI Committee: 21 March Adoption in Plenary: June

February 14th: Start of the Second Reading in the European Parliament

  • The Second Reading has been announced in Plenary in Strasbourg. The European Parliament has now 3 months (+1 month) in order to reject or the amend the Council Common Position. Parliament needs 365 votes in order to amend the Common Position. If it fails, the Council Common Position will become law in the 25 Member States.

January 23rd: Council Common Position

  • EC Council of Ministers confirms its Common Position draft to go to the ENVI Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (Statement of reasons: PDF version HTML version)

June/July: Council Common Position Formulated

  • 24/06/2005 political agreement on articles: PDF Version HTML Version (document is dated the 29th)

  • 07/07/2005: political agreement on recitals

  • Final text from 18 Nov 2005 including both recitals and articles: PDF Version HTML Version

June 24th: First reading of the European Parliament

  • EC ENVI Committee confirms an altered version of INSPIRE that goes through to first reading in the European Parliament : HTML version

July 26th: Submission of the Commission Directive Proposal

The Commission submitted to the Council its proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing an infrastructure for spatial information in the Community (INSPIRE). The proposal is based on Article 175(1) of the Treaty.