The INSPIRE directive, that came into force in 2007, aims to create a European Union (EU) spatial data infrastructure. This will enable the sharing of environmental spatial information among public sector organisations and better facilitate public access to spatial information across Europe.
A European Spatial Data Infrastructure will assist in policy-making across boundaries. Therefore the spatial information considered under the directive is extensive and includes a great variety of topical and technical themes. INSPIRE is based on a number of common principles regarding e.g. metadata and interoperability of data.
space4environment contributes to an INSPIRE working group on biodiversity data and is therefore involved in discussions on improving national and European data sets. Moreover, space4environment controls and documents the compliance of metadata to the theme-related INSPIRE metadata regulations.