European Commission

Evaluation in the Commission

The EU Commission regularly evaluates the results and impacts of its policies and initiatives, in order to improve decision making.

Evaluation is vital to keep EU policies effective and ensure transparency and democratic accountability. An evaluation typically answers questions concerned with:

• relevance: do the objectives correspond to the needs and problems?
• effectiveness: to what extent were the set objectives attained?
• efficiency/cost-effectiveness: were the results achieved at a reasonable cost?

The aim is to provide a reliable and objective assessment of how efficient and effective initiatives have been, or are expected to be (for ex ante evaluation).

Evaluation is carried out at different stages of a programme:

• prospectively, in the case of ex ante evaluation or impact assessment – in order to support the preparation of proposals, and assess:
  • if the objectives correspond to the needs
  • if the proposed instruments will attain the objectives effectively at a reasonable cost,
• retrospectively – during or after action (interim or ex post evaluation). The aim here is to improve the quality of the intervention and account for the results achieved.

Since 2010 the Commission promotes the use of 'fitness checks'. To have more information on Fitness checks please refer to this note. [34 KB]