Location matters. Are science and policy arenas facing the Inner Peripheries challenges in EU?

•The key role of Inner Peripheries in academic and policy contexts is illustrated.•Methods to assess and monitor local issues of Inner Peripheries are proposed.•The main opportunities to foster the Inner Peripheries are suggested.•A new integrated policy scheme to tackle local problems is introduced.•Academic and policy priorities to reduce spatial inequalities are set. The challenges to achieve balanced territorial development are often related to the predominance of spatial concentration processes, lack of awareness of local potential and critical mass in remote regions. Despite this large-scale picture, increasingly development problems are observed also in more “centrally-located” regions of Europe necessitating a much finer grained level of spatial analysis. The resulting perception of Inner Peripheries in recent years pose several critical questions for the evaluation and planning of the European regional development policy and practice. This is particularly due to their nature, i.e. peripherality and marginality, which might instigate local population feelings of being treated ‘unfair’ and, at the same time, to the relatively poor attention given by EU policy and scientific frameworks to these remote territories. Recent studies have highlighted the need for reflecting local distinctive challenges and pathways in different types of rural regions. Through adopting an interdisciplinary approach with robust and finer level analyses and multi-stakeholder processes, the Academic studies and policy strategies should pool their strengths towards understanding and devising actions for mitigation of the underlying problems, making use of European and National Funds also for affected Inner Peripheries.