Report from Workshop on EU Policy Evaluation

Just before carnival, Paul Stephenson (FaSoS), with Prof. Frans Leeuw (Law), held a workshop at Campus Brussels on Policy Evaluation in the EU. They welcomed 46 participants over two days for 22 papers over 8 panels: a mix of junior and senior academics, and various practitioners from the EU institutions and beyond, including the European Parliament, European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, the Regulatory Scrutiny Board and European Court of Auditors.

The workshop was co-financed by the Centre for European Research in Maastricht (CERiM), FASoS Research Stimulation Fund (RSF), Stichting Universiteitsfond Limburg (SWOL) and the Law Faculty of Maastricht University.

The aim of the workshop was to stimulate debate on approaches to policy evaluation in the EU by bring together EU policy researchers with scholars from the evaluation community. We sought to explore conceptual and methodological approaches to engaging in evaluation, and to take critical perspectives on current evaluation practices in the world of policy making and implementation. Research papers were encouraged on the following themes:

-Approaches to EU policy, programme, or project evaluation
-Ex ante, mid term and ex post perspectives on policy analysis, including monitoring
-Theories, concepts and frameworks applied in the evaluation of EU policy
-Perspectives on effectiveness, efficiency and economy in EU policy studies
-The link between implementation and evaluation and/or evaluation and agenda-setting
-Gauging success and failure in EU policy analysis, including framing and discourse
-Contributions from different perspectives on evaluation, and in particular, realist evaluations of policy making and implementation
-Evaluation actors, institutions and evaluation culture in the EU

For the list of papers and panels please check the CERiM website. For pictures of the event, please find them here.