EQUAL - Final report - eng - navreme

0. INTRODUCTION
0.1 Foreword
EVALUATION OF CIP EQUAL TRANSNATIONAL CO-OPERATION PRINCIPLE
The evaluation project “Evaluation of CIP EQUAL Transnational Cooperation Principle” commissioned
by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs of the Czech Republic (MoLSA) took place in the period
from April to October 2008 in the territory of the Czech Republic and ten European Union (EU)
countries, to be specific, in Austria, in Germany, in Poland, in Slovakia, in the Netherlands, in the
United Kingdom, in Portugal, in Spain, in Italy and in France. The individual evaluation steps, i.e.
analysis of documents, questionnaire survey, evaluation visits and interviews, case studies, focus
groups, SWOT and process analysis took place in accordance with the stipulated time schedule. The
evaluation output was in total six reports (including this Final Report), which, in accordance with the
stipulated time schedule and the contract, answered the individual evaluation tasks and questions.
This Final Report summarises the observations done by means of the mentioned evaluation tools
(Chapter 4) and the findings based on their analysis with regard to the evaluation questions (Chapter
5) and brings recommendations directed at the individual recipients of the outputs of this evaluation
and the target groups (Chapter 7). In this report, the evaluation methodology is introduced in details,
including description of the particular tools (Chapter 3.4), namely on the basis of an analysis of global
and partial evaluation objectives, thus the objectives covering wider evaluation context and its
particular steps (Chapters 3.1-3.3). As we have structured the Final Report differently from the
original tender documentation in the sense that we have used the above-mentioned combination of
three views (observations according to the methods, findings according to the topics,
recommendations according to the target groups), we mention an outline of the results of the
evaluation according to the original points of the assignment by the contracting authority in Chapter 6.
A highly valuable annex to this report is a summary of all the contacts and documents the twelvemember
international team has gathered and used for the evaluation of the transnational cooperation
(TC) principle of the Community Initiative Programme EQUAL (CIP EQUAL). We mention this annex
above all because we presume further utilisation of these contacts and documents by the contracting
authority’s representatives and also by the other evaluators.
The Community Initiative EQUAL differed from the main forms of the aid from the European Social
Fund (ESF) in the past periods, among others, by the transnational cooperation principle. During the
2007–2013 programming period, within the framework of the ESF programmes, also the chosen
principles of the Community Initiative EQUAL are supported in cross-sectional way for the very first
time. To be specific, besides the partnership and innovativeness principles, the transnational
cooperation principle is concerned; the experience from CIP EQUAL is transposed into the Human
Resources and Employment Operational Programme (OP LZZ), in which the transnational cooperation
is included in the form of priority axes, to be specific, these are Priority axis 5a Transnational
Cooperation (Convergence) and Priority axis 5b Transnational Cooperation (Regional Competitiveness
and Employment). It is assumed that fulfilment of the transnational cooperation principle will enable
to achieve still better results of the individual projects than those that would be able to be achieved
without its application. Thus the sense of the evaluation of the transnational cooperation principle CIP
EQUAL was, among others, to contribute to the improved quality of the results of the 2007-2013
programming period.
Navreme Boheme, s.r.o. 5