"TESS will assist policy makers to integrate knowledge from the EU, national, regional and local level into the decision making process while also encouraging local people to maintain and restore biodiversity ecosystem services. To achieve this, a transactional environmental decision support system will be designed, linking central policy planning to local livelihoods. To develop this system, TESS will first research the needs and capacities of central policy makers and local actors, identify paths and trajectories of cooperation, and model required transactions between the central and the local in relation to each one’s needs. A set of representative case studies from the whole EU (including the New Member States and pre-accession countries) will test the validity of the models and consolidate the project’s results into the design for a transactional environmental decision support system, named TESS. TESS will also include base-line information and predictive models for Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), Sustainability (Impact) Assessment (SIA) and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). TESS will be supplemented by a set of brief and memorable policy guidelines to ensure its usefulness and enable its application in a European context. The process of developing TESS will be facilitated by a large interdisciplinary consortium, in which participants include European associations with a strong network of support and influence not only in the Brussels milieu, but also at the grassroots."