Roadmaps for Administrative Capacity Building - Practical toolkit

Good governance is a crucial element of economic development and cohesion policy. It calls for good administrative capacity, meaning that the national, regional or local civil service needs to be efficient and effective in implementing the policies and/or tasks entrusted to it. Experience shows that EU Member States and regions with weak institutions have significant problems with absorbing available EU funds and putting them to the best possible use.

The need to boost the administrative capacity to manage and implement the EU funds has definitely moved up the agenda. This is evident in the draft 2021-2027 regulations proposed by the Commission, which include new provisions that place more emphasis on capacity building. The aim of these provisions is to support a bespoke approach by making available a wider menu of tools and encouraging more strategic use of funding for capacity building measures. Administrative capacity is also identified as key to effective implementation of the funds, especially in the investment guidance of the 2019 European Semester country reports.

EU Member States wishing to improve their administrative capacity are encouraged to take full advantage of the new legal provisions. One of the new features is the option of developing a roadmap for administrative capacity building. This is an optional document of a strategic nature that includes comprehensive measures for building capacities in managing and making use of the funds. Roadmaps have no prescribed format, and they can be developed for Member States or for individual programmes.

This toolkit is designed to provide operational insights, methodological and practical support and examples that can be used in developing roadmaps. It builds on experiences from the Pilot action on frontloading administrative capacity building to prepare for the post-2020 programming period carried out by the OECD on behalf of and in close partnership with DG REGIO between the summer of 2018 and the autumn of 2019. In this pilot action, five managing authorities and one intermediate body were helped to further improve their administrative capacity. This was done by analysing their needs and designing future actions to address them. This toolkit refers to practices, experiences and examples from the pilot action.