Year:         2001-2002
Client:     European Community, DG JAI
Country:   Members of the EU
Value TA:  ?220,270

This evaluation concerned all projects in member states co-financed in 1998 and 1999 under budgetlines B3-4113, B5-803 and B7-6008. As an important part of the evaluation took place through questionnaires, a pilot phase was included for in-depth interviews and questionnaire development and testing. Because the evaluation could only start in the beginning of 2001 and because the turnover of staff within the projects that were evaluated proved to be rather high, data collection was not always easy and quite some time had sometimes to be spent on finding the persons who were familiar with the projects. Furthermore, the large number of languages involved (11) posed some special problems, especially during the file studies.

An important finding of the evaluation concerned the long time needed to adapt organisations, rules and procedures to new policies. As many Member States kept on adjusting policies, implementational capacity sometimes was reduced for prolonged periods of time. Further it was established that the innovative projects that had been supported by the European Union, not only were highly appreciated by the organisations concerned but also had been duplicated quite generally thus yielding a considerable multiplier effect. An outright negative conclusion concerned the financial procedures of the European Commission used when supporting these projects. These procedures were considered extremely bureaucratic, burdensome, slow and without apparent logic.