Unveiled during the 8th Cohesion Forum on 17 March, the platform is a resource for the general public, journalists, researchers, and policymakers. It demonstrates how cohesion policy promotes economic and social development and strengthens territorial cohesion across the EU.
Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms Elisa Ferreira said reflects the desire to ensure that implementation of the policy is transparent and closer to citizens.
‘We are putting 1.5 million projects on the map, literally, in a user-friendly form. This is part of our commitment to openness and transparency and it complements our award-winning open-data platform.’
Translated in English and in all EU languages by 2022
Project titles and descriptions are automatically translated into English. By 2022, Kohesio will cover all official EU languages.
The projects, supporting more than 500 000 beneficiaries, cover national and regional operational programmes for the 2014-2020 funding period, supported by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the Cohesion Fund (CF) and the European Social Fund (ESF).
The platform offers an interactive map indicating the location of projects in the EU-27. Projects in red circles are examples of best practices.
The information provided includes funding, beneficiary details and, where available, links to websites, audio-visual resources, or more detailed project descriptions published on InfoRegio our main source of information for Cohesion Policy.
Search filters enable identification of projects by theme, policy, beneficiary, or region. Project datasets can be downloaded for analysis and reuse
Support for Managing Authorities
Kohesio is based on collaboration between the European Commission and the Managing Authorities and encourages more frequent contact and exchange of best practices on data standardisation.
The Managing Authorities agree the platform is a useful tool for publicising cohesion policy data. ‘Kohesio will build on linked data and use the lists of operations published by programmes to offer greater transparency and visibility of cohesion policy data,’ says Tsvetelina Dineva, spokesperson for the Central Coordination Unit Directorate, Council of Ministers, Bulgaria.
‘Through Kohesio, the general public will gather ideas and experience from projects implemented in each EU country.’
Kohesio has links with the Bulgarian management and monitoring information system, eufunds.bg, ensuring publicity for about 40 000 EU-funded projects in Bulgaria. According to Ms Dineva, the social media accounts of the country’s district information points will also be used to create awareness of EU investments in Bulgaria listed on Kohesio.
Claudia Anreiter, communication officer for IGJ/ERDF Austria, says the platform’s search and filter functions are easy to use and the link to other public data promotes transparency. The project stories and background information or data analysis in the ‘themes’ section also provides added value for users.
‘Kohesio will be useful for identifying projects in specific regions or villages, for use in the ‘Europe in my region’ campaign, Ms Anreiter says. ‘Best practice case studies can be used as content for websites or newsletters and to inspire potential beneficiaries.
‘The big added value is to have easy access to funded projects in other countries without having to search lists. If I want to know what type of projects Ireland or Malta are funding, I get the result with a few clicks. If a journalist wants to know what projects are funded in, let’s say, Salzburg, I could just point him or her to Kohesio,’ explains Ms Anreiter.
Italy’s OpenCoesione initiative says Kohesio would help to improve the civic monitoring of publicly-funded projects. The automatic translation of data on Italian projects into other languages would make it accessible to a wider audience.
OpenCoesione confirms it intends to collaborate with Kohesio to ensure greater data exchange and to define a common semantic framework on EU-funded project data.
Expanding the scope
Kohesio began as a pilot project with six Member States, managed by DGREGIO in close collaboration with DG CNECT for the technical developments, and the participation of DIGIT. It was scaled up in 2021 to cover the EU-27.The platform relies on open-source software developed by Wikimedia Deutschland and uses technology such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and semantic search to make accessing the data easier.
DG RTD, in partnership with the Commission’s Joint Resource Centre, plans to use Kohesio’s data to analyse if the Horizon Europe investment programme and ERDF complement one another and to determine the impacts of both.
To ensure that Kohesio does not become just one database of many, the platform will be regularly updated based on the latest list of operations. New functionalities will be added to improve access to information and the visibility of EU-funded projects. The platform will become fully multilingual by the end of 2022.
Interreg projects and programmes for the 2021-2027 period will be added, including those supported by the Just Transition Fund.
