The INSPIRE Directive aims to create a European Union spatial data infrastructure for the purposes of EU environmental policies and policies or activities which may have an impact on the environment.
The INSPIRE infrastructure involves a number of items, which require clear descriptions and the possibility to be referenced through unique identifiers. Examples for such items include INSPIRE themes, code lists and application schemas. The INSPIRE Registry provides a central access point to a number of centrally managed registers, which contain descriptions of these items (including labels, definitions and other relevant properties) in different languages and assign unique and persistent identifiers to them. The content of the registers are based on the INSPIRE Directive, Implementing Rules and Technical Guidelines.
