Our projects

The EU Cohesion Policy is a key investment strategy aimed at reducing regional disparities and fostering smart, sustainable, and inclusive growth across the EU. It operates through national, regional, and Interreg cooperation programmes to support infrastructure, the green transition, connectivity, and social inclusion in the EU Member States, while preparing candidate countries for EU membership by building administrative capacity through Interreg and tailored training programmes.

The overall objective of the project is to prepare candidate countries for implementing cohesion policy in the lead up to and upon accession.

The project specifically aims to:

• Train staff from national administrations at central and local/regional level participating in Interreg programmes (and IPA III programmes, if staff overlaps), to reinforce their capacities for participating in and later on implementing cohesion policy programmes.
• Organise study visits (and cover related travel and accommodation costs and per diem) for short-term work experience in selected Member States’ managing or audit authorities, thereby increasing the skills for benefitting better from their participation in existing programmes and preparing future ones.

The EU has financed two global interventions to support the UNECE Water Conventiontion, with a particular emphasis on promoting accession and strengthening implementation. The evaluation covered Phase 1 (01/04/2019-30/06/2022) with a budget of EUR 2,350,000, and Phase 2 (01/07/2022-31/12/2024) with a budget of EUR 3,000,000. The scope was global and the evaluation covered the entire implementation periods of Phase 1 and Phase 2.

The ex-post evaluation’s overarching purpose was twofold: (i) provide EU services and stakeholders with an independent assessment of performance and levels of results achieved against expected objectives, and (ii) identify lessons learned, conclusions, and recommendations to inform improvements to ongoing and future support.

Evaluation focus:

• assessing the relevance and coherence of EU-supported components of the Convention’s work programme in both phases, with a particular focus on activities that facilitate accession and support implementation by new Parties;
• examining the efficiency and effectiveness of the Water Convention secretariat in implementing EU-supported components, including its capacity to respond to increasing demands; and
• drawing lessons and forward-looking recommendations for improving sustainability. A Theory of Change is to be developed considering causal and contextual assumptions as part of the assessment approach

The purposes of this contract are as follows:

1) Provide support to the business owner (system owner) in areas covered by the OPSYS ecosystem and in line with the Commission PM21 standards for: a)Business management in terms of requirements, tests, and process management; b)Programme management; c)Change management; d) Provision of ad hoc long term and short-term expertise.

2) Provide support to the IT supplier(s) from a business point of view, specifically in terms of expertise in the area of user experience, data migration or quality assurance.

The main results to be achieved by the contractor are as follows:

1) Programme management as well as OPSYS governance and the other corporate governance institutions (GPSB, CC) are supported, and a good level quality assurance and professionalism is assured;

2) Change management activities are designed and performed in a sustainable manner for all affected staff within DG INTPA, DG NEAR and FPI, as well for relevant external partners. These activities include, inter alia, communication, training, change agent network, helpdesks in coordination with IT supplier responsibilities;

3) Business processes are improved and efficiently managed;

4) Data synchronization during the transitory phases, as well as data migration to phase out legacy systems are achieved, mitigating the burden on users;

5) Short-term expertise is identified and provided according to existing and emerging needs.

The EU built its own capacities to identify conflict risks at an early stage and contributed to strengthening the overall conflict prevention, peacebuilding and mediation capacity of the international community. It sought to establish and promote the use of mediation as a first-response tool in emerging or ongoing crisis situations. As stated in the revised EU Concept on Mediation and Dialogue (November 2020), the EU was uniquely positioned as an actor in conflict prevention and mediation. The EU aimed to use mediation, conflict early warning and conflict analysis in a more systematic way as efficient and cost-effective instruments for preventing and resolving conflicts.

The objective of the contract was to provide the EEAS ISP.2 Division (Conflict Prevention and Mediation Support) with high-quality external expertise (technical assistance) and logistical support in the fields of conflict prevention and analysis, peace mediation, and dialogue support.

The overall objective (Impact) to which this action contributes is to ensure the efficient and effective use of PA assistance in Türkiye by enhancing the quality and performance of EU-funded interventions through strengthening design, monitoring and evaluation systems, with a particular focus on supporting the post-earthquake recovery and reconstruction efforts.

The specific objectives (Outcomes) of this contract are as follows:

• To conduct a single monitoring mission in line with the ROM methodology to ensure achievement of objectives of the PPF project at action level.
• To assess the performance of the PPF Project in terms of the ROM criteria.

1) Restore 1,600 hectares of tropical montane forest in the San Martin Region, recovering areas affected by forest fires, protecting biological diversity and environmental services.

2) Plant 1,000 trees in the province of Cusco in the districts of San Jerónimo and San Sebastián and 150 urban trees in Cercado de Lima.

3) Strengthen the capacities of municipal officials responsible for the Municipal Programs of Education, Culture and Environmental Citizenship (EDUCCA) and their environmental promoters, on the importance of conservation and management of green areas and trees, and the planting and maintenance of trees and the prevention of forest fires.

The independent Evaluation of the Lebanon World Food Programme (WFP) Country Strategic Plan (CSP) 2023–2027 aims to generate evidence and learning on WFP’s performance in Lebanon, while ensuring accountability to WFP stakeholders and affected populations.

The evaluation covers all WFP activities (including cross-cutting results i.e. adherence to humanitarian principles, gender and inclusion, protection and accountability to affected populations) from mid-2020. This also includes activities prior to the Country Strategic Plan (2023-2027) to better assess the results trends, contextual evolution and the extent to which the strategic shifts envisaged with the introduction of the CSP have taken place.

CSP key sectors and activities include:

• Emergency preparedness
• School feeding
• Livelihoods activities
• Social protection
• Institutional capacity strengthening

The evaluation employs a mixed-method approach that triangulates qualitative and quantitative data from a variety of sources. For this purpose, the evaluation team is conducting interviews with different stakeholders including WFP staff at HQ, regional and country level, WFP cooperating partners, donors, UN agencies, government entities as well as focus group discussions with the beneficiaries.

The general objectives of this program are:

• to improve the efficiency and transparency of tax and expenditure management by the Directorate General of Taxation (DGI) and sector ministries;
• to improve the tax administration's orientation towards citizens and communication with taxpayers from D to C according to the P3-10 standard of the tax administration diagnostic assessment tool (TADAT);
• to evaluate gender- and climate-sensitive programme budgets with 3 sector ministries that play an important role in decentralisation by facilitating the 3 performance (cost-effectiveness) audits from the Audit.

The Benin Gender Equality Support Programme (PAEG) aims to strengthen gender equality among the Beninese population and thereby sustainably reduce the socio-economic vulnerability of women in Benin.

The programme focuses in particular on:

• increased support in the fight against gender-based violence (GBV),
• improving support for women’s leadership and the promotion of peace,
• building the technical and institutional capacity of the SDC’s partners to enable crosscutting implementation of transformative gender and the Leave No One Behind (LNOB) principal,
• advocacy and policy dialogue with the government to improve coordination and promote gender equality.

The implementation of the programme will favour a participatory approach according to the “make things happen” principle (stakeholder approach). Within this context, the decentralised structures of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Micro Finance (MASM) will be the central actors of the programme and will work on setting up a decentralised management system for social action, to ensure the sustainabilty of the activities. The role of civil society organisations (CSOs) will be to implement the strategy promoting women’s leadership, whilst the programme will support the advocacy / policy dialogue carried out by the TFPs and the CSOs to better institutionalise gender at macro, meso and micro levels.

The Policy Support Facility (PSF) is foreseen within The PI Multiannual Indicative Programme 2018-2020 to support the Union's relations with key partner countries. Such a facility is needed to respond to the dynamic and fast changing global environment that EU policies are being confronted with and to promote EU interests in a timely manner.

The PSF is one of the Partnership Instrument’s implementation modalities, providing responsiveness to emerging needs and priorities, and a flexible implementation modality. The PSF aims to support (existing) policy dialogues between the EU and partner countries in areas such as global challenges, the international dimension of the “Europe 2020” strategy, to facilitate economic relations with partner countries and to support public diplomacy. It will complement/support the external dimension of internal policies conducted under the other EU political programmes and instruments.

For the purpose of the Policy Support Facility, this Global Framework Contract (FWC) was put into place. Indeed, many European Commission Directorate Generals need shorter and more targeted quick actions rather than standalone, extensive projects/programmes to support the external dimension of their policy agenda. They are therefore interested in short-term targeted support and need a tool that can accommodate rapidly developing policy dialogues and priorities.

Policy sectors covered by this FWC: Environment, natural resources, biodiversity and sustainable water management; Raw materials; Energy; Climate change; Smart, sustainable and green growth; Research, development and innovation; Industry and SMEs; Regulatory cooperation and standards harmonisation; Employment and social policy; Education and training; Judicial cooperation; Migration and mobility; Foreign policy/security; Disinformation and societal resilience; Health and consumer safety;Digital; Economic and financial affairs; Transport; Governance, human rights and democracy; Maritime policy; Culture and creativity;Tourism; Citizens’ rights