Copernicus Thematic Workshop on Compliance Assurance

Compliance Assurance (CA) refers to the process and mechanisms designed to ensure adherence to EU laws, regulations, and policies by individuals, organizations, and Member States (MS). It comprises three components: 

• Compliance Promotion: Focuses on raising awareness, educating stakeholders, offering technical assistance, and engaging in consultations to promote understanding and voluntary compliance. 
• Compliance Monitoring: Involves data collection, inspections, audits, risk assessment, and reporting to ensure adherence to EU rules and to identify areas of concern. 
• Compliance Enforcement: Comprises various measures such as infringement procedures, financial penalties, safeguards, sanctions, cooperative dialogue, and action plans to rectify non-compliance. 

These three components of CA work in concert to ensure the effective implementation t of EU laws, safeguarding the integrity of the EU's single market and citizens’ rights. 

Earth Observation (EO) can play a crucial role in all components of CA by offering a comprehensive and objective view of our planet and how it changes. 

• EO supports promotion by providing free-and-open data, fostering awareness and transparency, and educating stakeholders about the environmental impact of their activities through visual insights. 
• With its extensive coverage, EO enables broad-scale surveillance for detecting non-compliance. EO allows continuous monitoring of specific indicators to measure compliance with targets, ensuring prompt detection of any deviations. 
• In case of emergencies or sudden events, EO provides a rapid response, allowing authorities to react quickly and providing essential evidence for legal interventions and enforcement. It is particularly useful in environmental risk and impact assessment, and advantageous for monitoring activities across national borders, facilitating coordinated enforcement of regulations across different countries.

Compliance assurance spans various EU policy domains that rely on regulatory frameworks and directives. While few legislative acts are solely dedicated to CA, CA is an indispensable component of most regulations and directives on resource use, where EO may significantly contribute.  Examples of policy areas where EO data is used for compliance include:

• Agriculture: The Common Agricultural Policy historically relies on EO to verify area-based aid, constituting nearly 80 % of EU funding dedicated to agriculture and rural development.
• Environmental Monitoring: The Commission uses geospatial intelligence to investigate complaints regarding the deterioration of habitats protected under the Nature Directives. 
• Marine Surveillance: The European Fisheries Control Agency and the European Maritime Safety Agency use the Copernicus Maritime Surveillance Service to regularly provide data to national authorities, notably identifying illegal fishery activities.
• Security: The Copernicus Border Surveillance Service is used to monitor and secure EU borders, ensuring compliance with security and immigration regulations.
• Pollution: The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service supports reporting and analysis, offering products and services that describe past, current, and future air pollution fields.

This Workshop on the use of EO to support Compliance Assurance is organized by the Knowledge Center on Earth Observation (KCEO) in collaboration with DG DEFIS and structured around three distinct objectives, each corresponding to a specific segment of the workshop:

• User needs: Analyze and underscore the role of Earth Observation in compliance assurance within both the EU and the broader international policy landscape. This includes a comprehensive examination of the policy context, key regulations and policy areas, and the relevance of EO to both the public and private sectors.
• Current products and services: Review the existing challenges and opportunities related to compliance assurance within the Copernicus framework. This involves evaluating current products and services, ongoing research activities, and identifying any knowledge gaps.
• Future developments: Identify emerging needs and requirements that will contribute to shaping the future and potential development of Copernicus and EU research activities. 

This workshop is intended for researchers, industries, governmental and non-governmental organizations, EU Policy DGs and agencies, EU national public authorities, and Copernicus Entrusted Entities. 

This workshop will complement the JRC-ESA workshop scheduled for June 11-12, which will primarily concentrate on environmental compliance assurance and will explore the utilization of EO to combat environmental crime.

Presentations and minutes of the workshop are available on the KCEO website for further insights.

We invite you to register 

Click here to view the agenda.