The evaluation consists of 15 thematic workpackages. They were prepared by an international expert group. Gábor Balás, director of HÉTFA and project manager Antal Piross contributed to the “Geography of Expenditure” final report, which analysed the geographic distribution of allocated resources of the cohesion policy in every Member State of the European Union.

In their lecture on “The EU Funds for Easing Poverty in Hungary”, they presented the results of the EU Funds evaluation. They argued that the problems of EU Funds aiming at EU cohesion (levy, sustainability issue, too short project periods…) are not the problems of this money, but derive from the general mistakes and project-logic of the 2007-13 funding period of the EU. The difficulty is caused by the fact that that to these mistakes on the fundamentally socio-political field they react in a more sensitive way than on other development fields.

According to their point of view the socio-political integration of EU funds from 2014 gave an important chance to the administration to tackle most of these mistakes. One way can be to establish a task division between the EU and national funds and to finance only those developments from the former that are less sensitive to the project-logic of the utilization of funds. It can largely contribute to the effective decisions if the Ministry establishes an impact assessment system that – beyond the evaluation of former programs – can support the interim decisions of the 2015-2020 period with evidence-based information.

The presentation can be downloaded from here (Hungarian).

The objective of this network of experts is to synthesise evidence on the performance of Cohesion policy in the 2007-2013 period by examining the physical and financial performance of the operational programmes and evaluation and other evidence available. Every year the expert network produces country reports on the achievements of cohesion policy and on a selected theme. All reports look at the physical and financial performance of the operational programmes and analyse evidence coming from evaluations undertaken in the Member States.

Another task of the network is a peer review of selected evaluations. The idea is to encourage the relevant authorities to carry out more and more rigorous evaluations. The review looks both the relevance of the evaluations as well as the techniques applied to produce meaningful and reliable results. A panel of a small number of high-level experts acts as the peers in this process.

Report on the “Job creation as an indicator of outcomes in ERDF programmes” – Hungary, 2013

Country Report on Achievements of Cohesion Policy – Hungary, 2013

Website of the Expert Evaluation Network

Károly Mike – Gábor Balás: Contracting for Structural Funds – How the EU’s Rules of the Game Shape the Behaviour of Member State Governments

ISBN 978-963-89112-6-1; ISSN 2062-378X

How do the rules of the game of EU cohesion policy shape the behaviour of Member State governments as they pursue their development goals? We explore this question from a contractual perspective. We argue that the analysis of the contract between the European Commission and a national government is crucial for understanding the latter’s incentives. And the terms of this contract are largely determined by the underlying principal-supervisor-agent contract between Member States and the EC. We pursue the consequences of the Commission–Member State contract for the institutionalisation of cohesion policy within the Member State, which is interpreted as the creation of a chain of agency contracts. We show both theoretically and with an empirical case study that the resulting contractual system affects the policy process in fundamental ways. Drawing on the insights of new institutional economics, the analysis of contracts detects some deep-seated causes of widely-perceived inefficiencies of EU-funded policies and points to potential institutional remedies.

The study is available in English »

Summary of the Research Report in English

The evaluation was commissioned by the National Development Agency (NDA) and performed by HETFA Research Institute in the second half of 2012.

Summary of the Research Report in English

The aim of the evaluation was to identify how territorial processes had been formed in Hungary, what role the development funds played in these processes, what reasons and factors explain the utilisation of development funds, and how it would be possible to develop a fund allocating structure serving more effectively the cohesion objective of development policy.

9 key evaluation questions and 26 sub-questions have been defined altogether. The large number of questions is due to the fact that there is no agreement on the definition of territorial cohesion among theoretical and practical experts either in Hungary or in the EU. One of the objectives of the evaluation, therefore, has been to define and present a conceptual framework, wherein the aims of territorial cohesion are applicable and plausible in development policies.

A mixed methodological framework including document analysis, data analysis, and impact assessment using spatial econometrics, case studies, interviews, and focus groups was applied. The interpretations of quantitative results were based on qualitative methods.

Summary of Research Report in English

The evaluation was conducted between July 2012 and March 2013. The evaluation formulated suggestions regarding development policy, including the measures of the 2007-2013 period and upcoming programming period 2014-2020 as well. The scope of the evaluation covers the development of organisations of touristic attractions, accommodation, touristic destination management (TDM), which were realised in the framework of the Regional Operational Programmes (ROPs) between 2007 and 2011. The evaluation was carried out in three dimensions: at national level and through two case studies representing the development of the Balaton Highlighted Holiday Region and that of a particular touristic sector, the health tourism in Eastern Hungary.

Research report is available in English

The objective of this network of experts is to synthesize evidence on the performance of Cohesion Policy in the period 2007-2013 by examining the physical and financial performance of the operational programmes, evaluations and other evidences available. Every year the expert network produces country reports on the achievements of cohesion policy and on a selected theme.

All reports look at the physical and financial performance of the operational programmes and analyse evidence coming from evaluations undertaken in the Member States. Hungary is represented in the project by Mr Gábor Balás, who is managing director of HÉTFA and an expert in Cohesion Policy evaluations and impact analysis. For 2011 the network of experts produced for every Member State a report on the achievements of cohesion policy and a policy paper on renewable energy and energy efficiency in residential housing. The network also identified examples of good practice in evaluation (interesting methods, good data, etc.). The main findings from all country reports are summarized in the synthesis reports which contain comparative analysis and trends across the EU.

 Synthesis report (in English)

Country report (in English)

Website of the project

We examined the adequacy of 16 micro-region’s programs, commissioned by the “Programme Office for the 33 most depressed micro-regions” of the National Development Agency, and co-worked with 16 experts.