Ex post evaluation of major projects supported by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and Cohesion Fund between 2000 and 2013: Environment

The objective of this ex post evaluation is to analyse the long-term contribution to economic development, quality of life and environmental sustainability of major projects in the environment sector co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) or the Cohesion Fund (CF) during the 2000-2006 or 2007-2013 programming periods. This will contribute to the wider effort engaged by the Commission to undertake ex post evaluation of Cohesion Policy.

Ten major projects have been selected from a shortlist provided by the ToR of 30 investments financed in the above mentioned programming periods. The major projects are located in ten different Member States and can be grouped in three sectors: water supply and sanitation (including wastewater treatment), solid waste management and environment remediation, protection and risk prevention. They are:

 Water supply and sanitation, including wastewater treatment:

• Sofia integrated water project (Bulgaria)
• Malta South sewage treatment plant (Malta)
• Sochaczew sewage management (Poland)
• Craiova sewerage network (Romania)
• Water supply and sewerage system (Croatia)
• Favara di Burgio aqueduct (Italy)
• Aguilas desalination plant (Spain)

Solid waste management:

• Purchase of a multifunctional ship (Estonia)
• Waste management centre Celje (Slovenia)

Environment remediation, protection and risk prevention:

• Sète-Marseillan lido protection (France)

Overall, these cases represent more than EUR 684 million of investment, including EUR 302 million of co-funding by the ERDF and CF. They were chosen on the basis of a set of criteria including strategic relevance, availability and quality of data as well as the willingness of stakeholders to cooperate. In the final selection care was taken to ensure a certain geographical/sectoral coverage. The rationale behind the selection was not to identify the most statistically representative projects, but to consider ten illustrative examples that can deliver interesting insights and policy lessons on the possible long-term effects of projects and on the causal chain leading to those effects.