The approach to the impact analysis of alternative policy options suggests that each policy option has different economic, social and environmental impacts, given their focus on different policy issues and the degree of policy intervention it represents. Moreover, each policy option affects a different set of stake-holding groups. Therefore, impacts and stakeholders groups should be identified and assessed per policy option.
Moreover, the impacts of policy options are affected by the future evolution of the economic environment and of the logistics sector. This environment is represented by the scenarios developed in chapter 3. Four scenarios, which are combinations of factors of the external environment and logistics trends, have been identified in chapter 3. Each scenario represents a different future state of the economic environment and logistics sector in terms of: i) spatial organisation of production and consumption (regional to global); and ii) economic development of Europe (stagnant to dynamic and prosperous). Therefore, the analysis of the impacts of the policy options for each stake-holding group will also be performed for each of the identified scenarios.
This approach is schematically illustrated in the figure below.