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Synthesis Report Ex-post Evaluation of the ERDF 2000-2006 by the term ‘planning and rehabilitation’ – the clean-up of and renovation of rural villages, inner city areas, old industrial sites, historical monuments and so on. • Projects of this kind, including those aimed at improving tourist facilities, absorbed almost a third of the total allocation of the ERDF to Objective 1 regions in both the EU15 and EU10 over the period. In Portugal and the French DOMs, they accounted for over 40% of the funding provided. In regions which received Objective 2 funding, they accounted for 36% of the total funding in the EU15, 47% in France and well over half in the Netherlands and Luxembourg. • The projects concerned also included wastewater treatment and other kinds of environmental infrastructure. These had tangible results in terms of the substantial number of households in deprived regions across the EU which were connected to a supply of clean drinking water or main drainage. • The projects equally led to many villages, towns and cities being made more attractive places to live in and the construction of social, cultural and sporting facilities. While the projects undoubtedly improved living standards and the quality of life, as well as territorial balance by encouraging more people to live in the places concerned and more businesses to locate there, unlike in the case of economic growth, there is no accepted set of indicators to quantify these effects. • Moreover, while their immediate impact on economic growth was limited, they almost certainly strengthened the conditions for long-term sustainable development by reducing social disparities between regions and territorial imbalances as well as by protecting the environment. 5.1.4 Cross-cutting issues A number of cross-cutting issues were examined in the course of the evaluation. Gender equality The evidence on gender equality, which was a horizontal priority in the guidelines, is that: • most programmes made explicit mention of the need to take it into account, but that it had limited tangible effect on the projects actually carried out; • only in four of the 12 case study regions was specific action taken to ensure that gender equality was specifically incorporated in programme design and project selection and implementation; • making the issue a horizontal priority did not in itself, therefore, lead authorities across the EU to take it seriously when deciding policy but that it might have inspired those that regarded it as being of major importance to take concrete action. Demographic change Demographic change was not included as a specific horizontal priority in the Structural Fund guidelines at the beginning of the programming period. The evidence from the evaluation is that: • it was increasingly recognised as an important issue in a number of regions as the period went on, though more in relation to projects financed by the ESF than the ERDF; 158
Ex-post Evaluation of the ERDF 2000-2006 Synthesis Report • the ERDF can contribute to regional responses to demographic trends through cofinancing appropriate projects, especially in relation to social infrastructure and enterprise support as well as education and training. 5.1.5 Multiple objectives and dispersed funding As implied by the above, EU funding was spread across many different policy areas in most regions. Although there was usually emphasis on one or two areas, the average regional operational programme in Objective 1 regions in the EU15 contained 41 measures. This dispersion arises for a number of reasons: • It reflects the fact that there are complementarities between policy areas, that, for example, support for enterprises should be accompanied by investment in infrastructure if there are deficiencies in this which harm business competitiveness. Indeed, it is the essence of an integrated approach to development that these complementarities are explicitly taken into account. • It also reflects a tendency to spread funding widely, to try to tackle a range of problems at the same time and to pursue multiple objectives. The aim typically was not only to strengthen the capacity of regions for economic growth but also to try to ensure that growth was balanced across regions and that disparities in living conditions were reduced. • The motivation for this may often have been political, to distribute funding across regions in relatively even way and to give local communities some discretion over how to use the funding. The effect in many cases was to improve territorial balance by reducing disparities in access to public goods and services and basic facilities, such as mains water supply and main drainage. It also made it more likely that the projects funded were in line with the features and natural assets of the local area concerned and, therefore, consistent with sustainable development. • The dispersion of funding across policy areas equally reflects the fact that the most appropriate regional development strategy is not necessarily to stimulate economic activity everywhere, in rural as well as urban areas and that protection of the natural environment or improvements in living conditions sometimes have higher priority.. • Nevertheless, the dispersion of funding also meant that support was in some cases spread too widely to have a significant impact in any particular policy – or indeed geographical – area. At the same time, the pursuit of the different objectives was in a number of cases not sufficiently integrated into an overall development strategy, so that the potential complementarities – or synergies – were not adequately exploited. 5.1.6 The particular case of Objective 2 Most of the points made above apply to both Objective 1 and Objective 2 regions. Objective 2, however, needs to be considered separately both because of the much smaller amount of funding involved and because of the smaller geographical areas in which financing was concentrated. Both condition what the funding can be expected to have achieved over the period. The expenditure co-financed by the ERDF under Objective 2 over the period amounted to just under EUR 265 per head in the EU15 over the 7 year period in the areas receiving aid at the full rate, or under EUR 40 per head a year. This was only just over a quarter of the funding per head 159
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