European Territorial Cooperation (ETC) is one of three objectives of the EU Cohesion Policy framework. The ETC objective is financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). The cross-border cooperation programmes supports regions that are located on both sides of internal and external borders of the EU and help them turn into strong economic and social poles.
The Ex ante Evaluation of the Central Baltic Programme 2014-2020 aims to ensure that the Operational Programme clearly articulates the programme's intervention logic and that it contributes to the Europe 2020 strategy and the Baltic Sea Region macro-regional strategy.
The evaluation team plans to proceed from a theory-based (impact) evaluation point of view. Furthermore, the team will attach considerable importance to looking for both confirming and disconfirming evidence. Important will also be to improve the programme's quality design.
Challenge of the evaluation lies in the fact that the evaluation team is in the first place evaluating the programming proces, and secondly the final programme. In this respect, the final report is as much reflecting this process as it is giving a final opinion on the quality of the programme itself. Therefore, the evaluation team will assess the used methodology during the process, in order to see what needs to be adjusted for the remaining part of the evaluation.