INSPIRE Metadata Regulation officially adopted

04 December 2008, 11:39am

The INSPIRE Metadata Regulation was adopted by the college on 3 December 2008. This Regulation will automatically enter into force on the 20th day following its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union. Links to the regulation will be published on the INSPIRE website and will also be available from the Euro-Lex web site, the official repository for all European law documents.

INSPIRE is the pan-European SDI - Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community - which legally binds the 27 EU Member States to implement a regional SDI according to a number of Implementing Rules (IR). The IR relating to INSPIRE metadata is the fist such rule to be adopted and becomes EU law within 20 days of publication in the Official Journal of the European Communities (OJ).

Implementing Rules can be made enforceable by various means, and so far the European Commission has adopted the route of issuing these technical documents as EC Regulations. A Regulation is a legislative act of the European Union which becomes immediately enforceable as law in all member states simultaneously. Regulations are distinguished from Directives, which need to be transposed into national law.

INSPIRE is a legal Directive, which all EU Member States must transpose into national law by 15 May 2009. But the Directive says little about the actual means of implementing the legal provisions - this is left to the IRs developed by the European Commission, wide external consultation and oversight provided by the INSPIRE Regulatory Committee (created by the Directive), which includes officially appointed representatives from all EU Member States.

INSPIRE Web site

Euro-Lex

Geo: International