Effective Project Appraisal and Regional Development
In some countries EU Cohesion Policy (ECP) serves as the main source of policy investment for regional development. Consequently, the Project Appraisal effectiveness of ECP is crucial to fostering their regional development trends. However, our experience in analysing wide sets of ECP approved projects’ databases, in countries such as Portugal and Spain, reveal a somewhat lack of criteria in the selection of ECP financed projects. This might explain why several regions in both Iberian countries remain in the group of less development European Union (EU) regions, since both countries joined the currently known EU. In this context, the main goal of this project is to investigate the Project Appraisal process of ECP is in several EU member-states’ regions, covering all parts of Europe (South: Portugal and Spain; North: Finland and Denmark; West: Germany and Ireland; and East: Czechia and Hungary). The main objective of the proposed analysis is not only to unveil and compare the ‘administrative/institutional criteria’ used for the selection of EU Cohesion Policy implemented projects, but also ‘who’ (entity, political party, etc.) interferes in that selection. Ultimately, the project proposes to find potential co-relation causes for ‘regional development trends’ and the ‘project appraisal of ECP process’.
“I was quite pleased with the news that I was selected to receive the MSRSA Grant since it is quite prestigious and competitive, and will allow me to expand my research in regional studies over the next 18 months”.
Principal Investigator: Eduardo Medeiros, Universitário de Lisboa, Portugal
Eduardo is a Geography Professor and an Integrated Research Fellow in DINÂMIA’CET-IUL, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portugal. He has a Ph.D.and post-Ph.D in Geography – Regional and Urban Planning, and around 200 publications, including more than 60 published papers in international journals, 12 books and 22 book chapters. His research interests are focused on EU Cohesion Policy, Territorial Impact Assessment, Territorial Cohesion, Territorial Development, Territorial Cooperation, Environmental Sustainability and Spatial Planning. He is a DG REGIO (European Commission) URBACT III and b-solutions expert, and a member of the scientific advisory panel of ESPON, and the European Commission Sounding Board of the Cohesion for Transitions Community of Practice and the Reflection Group on the future of Cohesion Policy (territorial cooperation). He is also a Regional Studies Association Fellow. He has coordinated several international policy evaluation projects and was a member of DG REGIO, ESPON and FCT projects. He was invited as a project adviser and to write reports and position papers for DG REGIO and the World Bank. He was already invited to be a keynote speaker by several International Universities and EU institutions (European Commission and Committee of the Regions). He is a member of the scientific and editorial committee of several journals and a peer reviewer of more than 35 international journals. He was a final Jury of the New European Bauhaus Prizes 2022. He is the lead expert in the Main Area of Governance in the Preparatory Action “New European Bauhaus Knowledge Management Platform” and organiser of three workshops of EURegionsWeekUniversity and chair in another.