Synthesis Report - European Commission - Europa

Synthesis Report Ex-post Evaluation of the ERDF 2000-2006
was important to relieve congestion and to speed up journey times, in some cases, it was difficult
to differentiate improvements, such as road widening, from maintenance in the data recorded.
In addition, a significant amount of funding in a number of regions went on improving local
roads. Although these might have been in a poor state and the support provided might well have
improved the quality of life for those living in the areas concerned, the projects undertaken were
not always linked effectively into the planning of the wider regional and national network.
Potential development opportunities were, therefore, lost as a result. This seems partly to be a
consequence of funding spread across a large number of projects in order to distribute support
across the region.
According to the evaluation, however, it is also a consequence of management and planning
difficulties, stemming in part from a lack of expertise in the authorities concerned. These
difficulties also contributed to the relative weight given to investment in roads as compared with
rail and to the shift of funding from one to the other which occurred over the period.
The evidence from Italy and Spain as well as from Poland and in Lithuania is that it was usually
easier to invest in road than in rail because of problems in implementing rail projects which
included:
• a longer design, planning and approvals process than for roads projects, which made it
difficult to complete the process within the programming period;
• the more complex nature of rail projects, because of the mix of different technologies –
electrification, signalling, engineering and so on.
The length of time typically required for a large-scale transport projects had wider effects than
just shifting funding from roads to rail. It also affected the quality of the projects undertaken and
their capacity to alleviate transport problems in the most effective way. Since the construction of
a new road or railways from planning to completion can take 10 years or more, this means that it
tends to extend over more than one programming period. This can lead to authorities, in some
cases, breaking up projects into smaller parts which can be completed within 7 years. In other
cases, it can mean ERDF financing being used for smaller projects which are quicker to complete
and easier to manage, though often less relevant in relation to the main transport problems.
The difficulties in this regard, compounded by the n+2 rule, led authorities in a number of
countries, including Italy, to allocate ERDF financing during the period to what are termed
“coherent” projects. These are projects which had already received funding from other sources
and which in many cases had been completed. In other words, the ERDF was effectively used to
cover expenditure which had already been carried out. While this could mean that national
sources of finance were then used to undertake the projects for which the ERDF was initially
intended, the evaluation was unable to find evidence of this occurring.
In addition, the case studies revealed that ongoing monitoring of programmes, particularly in
terms of results, was limited. In some cases, such as in Andalucía, Galicia and Mazowieckie, this
was due to the poor definition of the indicators to be monitored. In others, such in Attiki, Puglia
and Lithuania, it was a result of a lack of sufficient effort being devoted to monitoring, reflecting
the low importance attached to it by the authorities concerned.
Whatever the reasons for the relatively large allocation of funding to roads, the evaluation
concluded that it led to the neglect of other areas, despite these being explicit aims at the start of
the programming period. In particular, as indicated above, improvements in urban transport
systems were confined to a small group of countries and even here the aim of reducing
86