How can territorial effects of INTERREG programmes in an ex-post situation be measured? This question is addressed in a project by ÖIR in a consortium with 8 international partners who developed a method for “Territorial Impact Assessment” (TIA) for cross-border cooperation programmes (INTERREG A).
A throughly documented, well structured 5 step process ensures reproducability and reliability of the results in the context of the specific challenges faced by cross-border cooperation programmes. Apart from geographical and thematic extent of the programmes especially the availability of statistical data across national borders is a common problem. Thus the developed TIA CBC method has to combine quantitative-statistical with semi-quantitative and qualitative methods, in order to depict the net-impact of the programmes on their respective regions.
The developed method has been tested and refined in 5 case studies on INTERREG A programmes running in the 2014-2020 period. The result is a compendium of methods in the form of a handbook, which enables current and future CBC programmes to tender for and conduct a Territorial Impact Assessment of their programme on the basis of the ESPON TIA CBC project.
