This Report presents the outcome of the “Thematic global evaluation of the Commission support to decentralisation processes”. The purpose of the evaluation was to identify relevant lessons and to provide recommendations to help ensure opportune and timely support to decentralisation processes.
The evaluation covers EC aid delivery over the period 2000-2009 (within the context of the programmes managed by DG DEVCO). The evaluation aims to assess to what extent the EC assistance has been relevant, coherent, effective, efficient and sustainable in providing the expected impacts in the support of decentralisation processes, along with the EU added value. Moreover, it aims to analyse the coherence with the relevant EU policies and the partner governments’ priorities and activities.
The evaluation has been conducted in four main phases, consisting of structuring, desk, field and synthesis work. Eight Evaluation Questions were formulated following a structured process based on the analysis of the EU policy framework and the reconstruction of the EC’s intervention logic related to support to decentralisation processes. For each Evaluation Question a number of Judgement Criteria and Indicators were defined to guide the data collection and analysis.
The study focused on 22 country cases during the desk phase and 10 country cases for the field phase. Overall, more than 4,000 documents and publications were screened and analysed. Interviews were held with more than 200 people ? either individually or in focus group discussions ? in Brussels and in the field visit countries.
Key findings: