This study undertakes an analysis of financial and physical data from the Objective 1 and 2 programmes in 25 Member States, financed by the European Regional Development Fund during the period 2000-2006. The work is based on the programmes and Member States reporting to the European Commission, more precisely on a review of the Final Implementation Reports (FIRs) for 227 programmes, as well as financial data available in the Structural Funds Common System (SFCS).
The core task of the study is to build-up a complete and updated database on output, result and impact indicators. Therefore a major effort was made in terms of desk research, where official documents of the relevant programmes are carefully studied, and information to populate the database was obtained involving national experts for each of the 25 Member States where the programmes to be analysed were implemented.
Additionally a database on expenditure data was build-up, comparing the data of the SFCS with the information gathered from the Final Implementation Reports.
The study report provides a detailed analysis of the information collected concerning ERDF programmes expenditures and indicators. A separate section is devoted to the aggregation of data concerning core indicators.
In addition, the work includes a commentary, based on a review of the indicators reported in the Final Implementation Reports and the core indicators by the Commission for 2007-13, on the use of indicators by the programmes, and suggestions for adding possible new core indicators in the future.
Within the projects the tasks of the OIR comprised data collection, design and building-up of both databases as well as data validation and assistance to evaluation processes undertaken by t33.
