1. Regional Policy Planning ahead: support activities for the evaluation of cohesion policy programmes 2007–2013 Daniele VIDONI DG Regional and Urban Policy Brussels, 10 March 2014 1 Cohesion Policy

2. Regional Policy The background The Evaluation Unit is currently planning to: A.Launch a contract for a group that will support the analysis of evaluation plans and evaluations; B.Organize a conference in 2016 on “Impact evaluation of cohesion policy".

3. Regional Policy Scope of the conference the conference will be: a showcase for the best available evaluations, a place to discuss good practices in evaluation planning, an opportunity to broaden the actors involved in evaluation of cohesion policy, An opportunity to put MAs and evaluators in contact. The target audience for the event will be MAs, practitioners, academics and young researchers.

4. Regional Policy Possible sessions: The best impact evaluations of interventions co- financed in the 2007-13 programming period, The best Evaluation Plans for 2014-20, A poster session on good evaluation research proposals of the 2007-13 interventions. Dates: second half of May 2016 Venue: still to be defined, offers welcome.

5. Regional Policy Possible competition structure: The competition will target two separate strands of contributions: Best completed evaluation (commissioned by MAs). Best evaluation proposal by young and other researchers For both groups, three categories of contributions will be evaluated: Ex-post CBA, Theory-based evaluations, Counterfactual evaluation. Jury of international evaluation experts The winners will be invited to present their work at the 2016 conference.

6. Regional Policy Peculiar to the evaluation proposal strand: The researchers will write a proposal to evaluate the impact cohesion policy programmes 2007– 2013 funded by ERDF and CF on the basis of: REGIO data published in the DG REGIO website, The deliverables of DG REGIO Ex-Post Evaluation WPs (which will be published on the DG REGIO website), The data published by MAs...

7. Regional Policy Tentative roadmap: 1-3/10/14: announcement of the competition at the 11th EES Biennial Conference: Evaluation for an Equitable Society: Independence, Partnership, Participation, 1/3/15: opening of website for submitting contributions, 31/12/15: deadline for submitting contributions 31/3/16: decision on winners

8. Regional Policy The questions to you: Are you interested in these initiatives? Can you advertise the competition among the evaluators that are already supporting you? Are you willing to support potential evaluators with data/contact points for clarifications on issues related to already public data? 8