Building Capacities for Monitoring & Evaluation of the EUSAIR

A two-day workshop on Building Capacities for Monitoring & Evaluation of the EUSAIR, was held in Athens on March 21th and 22th, hosted by the Greek Project Partner of the EUSAIR Facility Point (FP), the Special Service for Strategy Planning and Evaluation of the Ministry of Economy and Development with the participation of the other participating countries of the EUSAIR; the Facility Point Project partners, National and Pillar Coordinators & representatives and experts. The aim of the meeting was two-fold: i) the introduction of the TSG1 Expert, hired by the Greek project partner of the EUSAIR FP, who is in charge of the preparation of the monitoring and evaluation system of Pillar I “Blue Growth” and is additionally assigned a co-ordinating role among the four TSG/Pillar Experts, and ii) the initiation of the project for the preparation of a Monitoring & Evaluation System for the EUSAIR During the meeting, the EUSAIR Monitoring and Evaluation framework was set in the presentations of the TSG Expert for Pillar/TSG 1, while an intervention was also made by the FP Lead Partner. ESPON Experts presented the “European and Macro-regional Territorial Tool” and its potential to be incorporated in the EUSAIR monitoring system, trying to assess synergies and looking for further cooperation for the development of the tools. The TSG1 Expert presented briefly the scope and objectives of the “Monitoring and Evaluation of the EUSAIR” project and its main tasks to be carried out, while in separate presentations the methodological details and the steps to be followed towards “Building the Pillar I Knowledge Base” and “Building the EUSAIR Monitoring and Evaluation System” were outlined. The discussion that followed was mainly focused on issues related to the monitoring of the macro-regional strategy such as:

• The need for identifying projects which serve the EUSAIR objectives and are under implementation (financed by the national ESIF Operational Programmes of the participating countries, the Cross Border Collaboration (CBC) Programmes, or other Programmes).
• The requirements regarding the preparation of an inventory of existing resources  by Pillar which contains the appropriate information (in terms of studies, surveys and statistics) in order to be an effective tool supporting the monitoring of the Pillar and also the preparation of the TSG for the upcoming programming period.
• The necessity of using homogenous and standardized monitoring and reporting procedures among the EUSAIR member countries and the requirement of setting-up relevant information flows.
• Issues regarding the selection of appropriate indicators for the monitoring of the whole EUSAIR macro-region as well as the monitoring of project implementation. The collaboration of TSG1 Expert with the ESPON team could facilitate the definition of basic indicators describing the current situation of the macro-region in the sectors the strategy has intervened and the depiction of its results.

It is widely accepted that the challenge of EUSAIR monitoring requires the close cooperation and coordination of all parties involved in the implementation of the Monitoring and Evaluation System: national Coordinators, the Facility Point, the TSGs, the TSG Experts and the other Experts to be hired for supporting the EUSAIR strategy implementation in IPA countries. More events are there to come! Building on Capacities for the Monitoring and Evaluation System of the EUSAIR! Stay tuned for our next activities !