Assessing the results

This page contains the Evaluation Plan of the Directorate-General (DG) for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs and the final reports of all evaluations commissioned by this DG.

Evaluation is defined as 'a judgment of interventions according to their results, impacts and the needs they aim to satisfy'. In other words, evaluation is using common sense to form a factually-based judgment on the value of an action.

Evaluation is a way to verify if public action delivers the expected results and to offer evidence-based guidance on how to better fulfill objectives or redefine the objectives if needed.

The main strategic role of evaluation is to support policy development and the continuous improvement of decision-making on priorities and resource allocation.

The purpose of evaluation is:

to contribute to the design of future interventions, including providing input for setting political priorities
to guide prioritisation and assist in an efficient allocation of resources
to improve the quality of the intervention by assessing the effectiveness, efficiency, and impact of activities, and learning how future performance can be improved
to report on the achievements of the intervention (accountability)

DG Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs Evaluation Plan (15kB)

Completed Evaluation Reports of DG for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (NOTE: The link is to the available reports in the EU bookshop. This link also contains the evaluations of the former DG Enterprise and Industry and DG Internal Market and Services)

More details on evaluation in the European Commission