Every year, Brussels grants substantial funds to the various European regions for the Rural Development Programme. The European Commission reviews the effects of this policy with a method designed in 2006. An alternative available for this method is less time-consuming and yields better results, as LEI, part of Wageningen UR, states in the institute’s The mixed case study approach report.
The European Commission designed the Common Monitoring and Evaluation Framework (CMEF) for the evaluation of the EU’s rural development policy 2007-2013. This is a fairly laborious method which involves the collection of data for some 160 indicators and answers to almost 140 joint evaluation questions. Many EU Member States regard the CMEF as an annoying requirement from ‘Brussels’. LEI, at the request of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation, has developed an alternative method. The particular added value offered by this method, alongside the time savings, lies in the insight it offers into the nature of and underlying reasons for the policy’s impact at a regional level.