Assessing the impact of EU cohesion policy

The meeting was organised in two sessions. One was institutional and looked at the new performance-oriented EU cohesion policy, its rationale and previous experiences with impact assessment. The other one aimed to assess the growth effects of EU cohesion policy with an eye at the different methodologies that have been used to measure them.

Programme - download here

08.55 - 09.00 – Welcome by Guntram Wolff

09.00 - 10.45 Session 1 – The impact of EU cohesion policy

Chair: Benedicta Marzinotto, Bruegel

Should EU cohesion policy be assessed for what it delivers? How to assess its impact? How to organize impact assessment? What results have previous exercises produced?

Speakers:

• 09.00-09.20 Philip McCann, University of Groningen and special adviser to Johannes Hahn, European Commissioner for Regional Policy
• 09.20-09.40 Veronica Gaffey, European Commission
• 09.40-10.00 Piotr Zuber, Polish Ministry of Regional Development

Discussant:

• 10.00-10.15 Laszlo Csaba, Central European University and Corvinus University, Budapest

10.15-10.45: Q&A and Roundtable discussion

10.45-11.00 Coffee break

11.00-12.30 Session 2 – Growth effects: what can economic models tell us?

Chair: Zsolt Darvas, Bruegel

How much economic growth has EU cohesion policy produced? What can economic models teach us about the impact of EU cohesion policy? What different methodologies are used to measure effectiveness and what are their relative merits?

Speakers:

• 11.00-11.20 Angel de la Fuente, Barcelona Graduate School of Economics
• 11.20-11.40 John Bradley, EMDS
• 11.40-12.00 Jan in’t Veld, European Commission

Discussant:

• 12.00-12.15 Stig Henneberg, Danish Ministry of Finance

12.15-12.45 Q&A and Roundtable discussion

12.50 – Buffet lunch

13.30 - END

Event materials

• Summary of the event here
• John Bradley, presentation, Assesing the impact of EU cohesion policy: what can economic models tell us? here
• Angel de la Fuente, Testing, not modelling, the impact of Cohesion support: a theoretical framework and some preliminary results for the Spanish regions, here
• Janos Varga and Jan in 't Veld, Assessing the potential impact of EU Cohesion Policy based on a structural macroeconomic model with semi-endogenous growth, here
• Veronica Gaffey, Evaluating the impact of EU cohesion policy here

Video

Q&A with Philip McCann, University of Groningen and special adviser to Johannes Hahn, European Commissioner for Regional Policy

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