Synthesis Report - European Commission - Europa

Synthesis Report Ex-post Evaluation of the ERDF 2000-2006
• the growing emphasis on the sustainability of development in the context of global
warming and the mounting concerns with safeguarding the environment;
• the ageing of the population, the implications of which became more apparent as the
period went on, and the increase in migration which affected many regions, both those
experiencing high levels of inflow and those experiencing significant outflows.
All of these issues, which were not a prominent part of the policy agenda when the programmes
for the period were initially formulated, were covered explicitly in the evaluation. The aim was, in
part, to check the extent to which programmes were flexible enough to respond to a changing
context and new challenges, as well as assessing the measures taken themselves.
EU15 VERSUS EU10 AND OBJECTIVE 1 VERSUS OBJECTIVE 2 REGIONS
A distinction was made throughout the evaluation between the operation of cohesion policy in
EU15 regions and that in the regions of the EU10 (the Member States which entered the Union in
May 2004). This is because the period over which financial support from the ERDF was provided
was much shorter for the latter, beginning only with their entry into the EU. They, accordingly,
had much less time than regions in the EU15 to make use of the funding, which means that what
can be expected to have been achieved is also much less. It is equally the case that GDP per head
in most regions was much further below the EU average than that in the least prosperous EU15
regions. The problems of economic development which cohesion policy needed to tackle were,
therefore, bigger in scale and more wide-ranging than in the EU15.
An equally important distinction was also made between regions supported under Objective 1 and
those supported under Objective 2 (for all eligible areas, see map at the end of this section). The
latter were predominantly in the EU15. Only three regions, Cyprus, Praha and Bratislava, in the
EU10 did not qualify for Objective 1 support and were assisted under Objective 2. The separation
of the two groups of regions is because of differences in the scale and, in many cases, the nature
of problems faced and because of the size of funding involved was much smaller in the case of
Objective 2 than Objective 1.
Regions receiving Objective 1 support were those with GDP per head below 75% of the EU average
at the time eligibility for funding for the 2000-2006 period was determined. Those in the EU15
can be divided into two broad groups. The first group consists of regions, mostly in the Southern
Member States, in which economic development was lagging behind. The main focus of policy
was, accordingly, on extending and improving their endowment of infrastructure of various kinds
so as to help create the conditions for sustained growth. The second group contains regions in
other parts of the EU15 with mixed characteristics. It includes those where development had
occurred in the past but which were left with declining industries, in much the same way as many
Objective 2 regions but to a larger extent. It also includes very sparsely populated regions in the
northern and central parts of Finland and Sweden, where the concern was to help to establish
competitive businesses partly in order to maintain population.
There are equally important differences between Objective 1 regions which were surrounded by
other Objective 1 regions, such as those in the south for the most part – in the extreme, where all
the regions in a country were Objective 1, as in Greece and Portugal – and those which were
located in the midst of stronger regional economies, such as those in Belgium, Austria or the UK.
Nevertheless, the Objective 1 regions share one important feature. They are all defined at the
NUTS 2 level which means that their boundaries are readily identifiable and a set of regional
statistics exist which can be used to examine developments over the programming period. The
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