Karolina Lipinska, Monika Radziszewska

European Structural and Investment Funds Journal, Volume 5 (2017), Issue 1, Page 44 - 52

This article describes how local government in Pomorskie built on the existing regional key clusters strategy using a bottom-up approach to developing the smart specialisation strategy.The article outlines in detail the process through which smart specialisations were selected, which enabled the participation of numerous entities in the proposal submission and selection process, and the impact that can already be seen in terms of applications submitted under international and regional calls for proposals, as well as highlights some of the success factors identified by the region.

Jan-Philipp Kramer, András Kaszap

European Structural and Investment Funds Journal, Volume 5 (2017), Issue 2, Page 120 - 133

Direct financial support to large enterprises in the 2007-2013 EU programming period is estimated at € 6 billion on the EU-28 level. Debates on the effectiveness of this sum often fuel controversies, containing varied points of view in favour of, or against using public money to subsidise large enterprises. The justification of subsidies often involves the argument of influencing the large firms’ location choice or realising additional indirect and wider benefits for SMEs and the regions in which they operate. The extent to which the EU support can influence the large firms’ behaviour is, however, difficult to measure, largely due to the complexity of the companies’ organisational structures and decision making mechanisms. This paper presents the methodology, the main findings and conclusions of Work Package 4 (Support to large enterprises) of the ex post evaluation of Cohesion Policy programmes 2007–2013. The evaluation used a theory-based approach, Contribution Analysis in particular, to open the ‘black box’ of large firm support and unravel the causal relationship between the distributed funds and the observed outcomes. The paper sheds light on the effectiveness of the interventions and identifies the conditions under which large firm support can result in added value at EU level.

Xavier Le Den, Miguel Riviere, Franziska Lessmann, Martin Nesbit, Kamila Paquel, Andrea Illes

European Structural and Investment Funds Journal, Volume 5 (2017), Issue 2, Page 134 - 146

This paper presents the findings of the ex-post evaluation of EU Cohesion Policy support to energy efficiency investment in public and residential buildings financed by the European Regional Development Fund and the Cohesion Fund during the 2007-2013 programming period. The programming period was largely a learning experience for both managing authorities and the European Commission when it came to energy efficiency interventions in public and residential buildings. The evaluation revealed that the quality of the interventions varied substantially across programmes, with a significant number of managing authorities providing an unclear rationale for the intervention and a weak link to the type of intervention supported, financing instruments used and indicators chosen. Accordingly, target setting and actual achievements of the interventions also varied substantially across programmes. Traceability and comparability of achievements across programmes was therefore limited. Nevertheless, the evaluators were able to derive a number of interesting findings and policy implications for the 2014-2020 funding period. Among them were the need to improve the quality of the monitoring systems, improve intervention design (clearer formulation of the rationale for support, clearer link from rationale to instruments and selection criteria), diversify the type of interventions supported and instruments used (i.e. to not only make use of grants for investments in building renovations), make more extensive use of energy efficiency audits (in order to better be able to measure progress) and ensure good inter-agency communication and peer-learning.