05 April 2017

ECA: The Commission’s negotiation of 2014-2020 Partnership Agreements and programmes in Cohesion

In the ECA´s report, the ECA examined whether the Partnership Agreements signed between the EC and the Member States help target the funds with a total funding volume of 350 billion euro more effectively.

The ECA found that, despite initial difficulties, the Commission and the Member States have better focused the funds on growth and jobs, identified investment needs and successfully translated them into objectives and results sought. They have set actions addressing the needs and identified outputs for programmes covered by the Agreements. However, an unnecessarily high number of performance indicators have been developed and performance measurement is not harmonised between the funds. The ECA makes a number of recommendations to the Commission and the Member States to improve the operation of the Agreements.

The Member States should:

— provide the Commission with the financial information necessary to effectively monitor compliance with the thematic concentration requirements (including the derogations set out in the ERDF regulation).

— discontinue the use of unnecessary programme-specific indicators in case of programme modifications.

— ensure that the data that is relevant to establish the effects of the ERDF interventions is collected.

The Commission should:

— ensure that its Cohesion policy legislative proposals for the post-2020 period are presented in time to complete the negotiations between the European Parliament and the Council before the start of the programme period.

— ensure that the ring-fencing of ESI funding to the thematic objectives is respected by the Member States.

— define a common terminology for ‘output’ and ‘result’ and propose it for inclusion in the Financial Regulation and ensure that the proposals for the sectoral regulations follow these definitions for the post-2020 periods.

— carry out an analysis of the 2014-2020 programme-specific and common indicators for outputs and results to identify those which are most relevant and best suited to determining the impact of EU interventions.

— disseminate ‘good practices’ by Member States for evaluations which can best determine the impact of EU interventions and assist the Member States in updating their evaluation plans which include such ‘good practice evaluations’.

— use the data collected via the annual implementation reports and the results of ad-hoc and ex-post evaluations for comparative analysis of performance and, where appropriate, to promote benchmarking and allow for policy learning during 2014-2020 period and

— apply the concept of a performance budget, which links each increment in resources to an increment in outputs or other results, to the funding of cohesion policy interventions for the post-2020 period, where appropriate. In this context, the Commission should make use of data on the actual unit costs determined during the 2014-2020 period.

Full press release

Full report

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