The evaluation provides an overview of how ERDF funding for RTD has been used across the EU and assess the preliminary results identified. Looking in more detail at selected countries and regions identifies the types of intervention that have been most successful (or effective) and the factors contributing to their success. It examines the effectiveness, efficiency and impact of investments in RTD infrastructure and activities, their coherence with other policies, their relevance and EU added value. It seeks to identify factors contributing to these investments' success or failure under different socio-economic conditions, good practice and their contribution to growth, sustainable development, and job creation.
Activities include comprehensive OPs mapping, literature review aimed to support the mapping and clustering activity and build prior theories of change about ERDF support to RTD investments and their expected results, literature review, case studies and cross-case analysis.
DG REGIO published a mapping of projects and beneficiaries on the ESIF Open Data portal, including an interactive dashboard of 10,000 projects, which CSIL has collected and presented as part of the project's completed activities.