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The aim of EPIGOV is to structure the findings of the rapidly growing body of literature on Environmental Policy Integration (EPI) at the global, EU, national and local/regional levels, to be illustrated and discussed at three annual conferences organized within the Project.

EPIGOV is a Co-ordination Action on Environmental Policy Integration and Multi-level Governance, starting in February 2006 and ending in January 2009, with ongoing work on the preparation of two volumes on the main Project’s results.

The Project involves 19 partners and is co-ordinated by Ecologic, Germany. FEEM is one of the three principal partner institutes, which include IEEP, UK, and SEI, Sweden.

The integration of environmental issues into sectoral policy areas is widely recognised by the environmental community to be the key for sustainable development. Given its cross-cutting nature, Environmental Policy Integration (EPI) requires a change in policies and their implementation, and represents therefore a challenge for policy makers.

The aim of EPIGOV is to structure the findings of the rapidly growing body of literature on EPI at the global, EU, national and local/regional levels, to be illustrated and discussed at three annual conferences organized within the Project.

Through the three annual conferences and the preparatory and coordination meetings internal to the Consortium, the Project is expected to synthesise scientific knowledge in the area of EPI at the global, regional and local levels, investigating particular modes of governance and interactions across levels of governance and developing a new analytical framework to address EPI.

Furthermore, EPIGOV is expected to create a network of researchers on EPI, also linking research on EPI with research in related fields. FEEM organized the second annual conference on “EPI at the regional/local levels and EPI at the national level”, which was held in Milan on the 22-23 November 2007, and led two literature reviews.

Overall, the Project produced 6 State-of-the-Art Reports, 6 Literature Reviews, and 26 research papers, which were presented and discussed at the three annual conferences. Two comprehensive publications illustrating the most interesting research papers presented at the annual conferences are forthcoming.