Evaluation workshop on the Economic Development OP Budapest, 24 April 2013

1. Evaluation workshop on theEconomic Development OPBudapest, 24 April 2013 Jack Engwegen Head of Unit, Hungary DG Regional and Urban Policy European Commission

2. Evaluations – key ingredient for decision making • Important role of evaluation • Helps to improve programme implementation • Provides information on the effectiveness, efficiency and impact of the programme and the policy overall • Crucial timing of these evaluations: • For the 2007-2013 programmes – first results • For the 2014-2020 programmes – input for more efficient and effective programmes • Next step: using these evaluations as a decision making tool

3. Evaluations – key ingredient for decision making (cont'd) • Generally, DG REGIO is very satisfied with the evaluation work done by the Hungarian authorities (also in the field of economic development interventions) • Hungary's evaluators were responsive to Commission recommendations regarding the use of new methods (e.g. counterfactuals  one of the first "new" Member States to use this approach for the ERDF) • There was a standstill in 2010 when no more new evaluations were launched, but Hungary has caught up again in subsequent years • The current reorganisation of the institutional structure must not weaken the capacity to deliver high quality evaluation work

4. Increased role of evaluations in 2014-2020 • Focus on results • Mandatory evaluation of the impact of each priority axis at least once during the programming period • Mandatory evaluation plan – Monitoring Committee(s) shall approve and amend where necessary • Monitoring Committees – make observations on evaluations and examine follow-up given to evaluation findings • All evaluations shall be made public • Evaluations are essential in the context of common and specific indicators, including benchmarking and target setting, for the performance reserve exercise (articles 18-20 of the draft CPR Regulation) and for performance audits

5. Evaluations of the Economic Development OP • The evaluations to be presented today refer to three priority axes of the EDOP: the first one (R&D and innovation), the second one (SME support/technology development in SMEs) and the fourth one (JEREMIE/financial instruments) and therefore cover around 90% of the OP's budget • The experiences of these three priority axes are extremely important, since even more important interventions in these areas are planned for 2014-2020: Hungary intends to dedicate 60% of its overall allocation to "economic development" promotion • A significant share of this support is to be delivered through financial engineering  there is a strong need for a detailed evaluation of these innovative instruments

6. R&D and innovation • R&D and innovation is a major focus of the Europe 2020 agenda and of the new programming period 2014-20 • We would be interested to know e.g.: • Which forms of innovative processes, products, services have been mainly supported in 2007-2013? • What were the results of the support given to clusters and cooperation projects of universities/research institutes and SMEs? • How did you manage to bridge the gap between knowledge generation and research on the one hand and innovation/commercialization on the other? • What was the concrete impact of the supported RDI measures on economic development and growth?

7. SME support/technology development in SMEs • The EDOP's biggest priority axis provided support to SMEs, mainly in the form of projects fostering technology development and technological modernisation in SMEs • There are several crucial questions that are of particular interest to the Commission, e.g. (without being exhaustive): • What was the actual impact of these measures on Hungary's economy, on indicators such as gross value added or employment? • What was the effect of these measures on interregional cohesion? To what extent did they contribute to the catching-up of the lagging regions? How was the funding distributed across the regions? • Have there been deadweight effects, i.e. was support provided to projects that would have been carried out anyway (also without public funding)?

8. JEREMIE/Financial instruments • Hungary played a pilot role in JEREMIE: with more than EUR 700 million dedicated to JEREMIE in the EDOP, the Hungarian Holding Fund has been the biggest single one in the EU • Questions of particular interest to the Commission: • What have been the main challenges, problems, obstacles that Hungary faced while implementing financial instruments? How were these issues solved? • How effective and efficient was the delivery system (through a Holding Fund, without EIF involvement etc.)? • How is the comprehensive reform of JEREMIE in 2010 (when a whole series of new financial products were introduced) evaluated? What were the main effects of this reform? • Are there already evaluations of the combined products (e.g. combinations of micro loans and grants) introduced in 2010?

9. Strong links between all EDOP priority axes • Finally, although priority axis-specific evaluations, all these PAs are strongly linked and we must understand these links • Some examples: • SME support through grants (2nd priority) sometimes crowds out SME support provided through financial instruments (4th priority) • On the other hand, combinations of both are well possible and should lead to synergy • R&D and innovation (1st priority) and financial instruments (4th priority) can be strongly connected e.g. in the form of venture or seed capital provided to innovative companies or spin-offs • Finally, funding provided to innovation (1st priority) can be linked to support to SMEs' marketing and export capabilities (2nd priority) • We would like to thank our Hungarian partners for organising this workshop today and we are very much looking forward to your presentations and our discussions in this workshop

10. Thank you very much for your attention!