A concept for evaluating innovation related actions under the EU Structural Funds

Against the background of a new programming period of the European Structural Funds and the anticipated increase of the financial importance of innovation-related actions, the goal of this paper is to analyze the quality of the existing (general) evaluation concept of the Euro-pean Union. This analysis aims to provide insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the evaluation concept in connection to innovation-related activities. The alternative evaluation concept that will be presented in this paper is focused on innova-tion-related activities and is generally based on the present EU-evaluation concept. Core changes are proposed for the impact analysis as well as the intensification of the policy advice contribution of evaluation. Similar to the existing EU-evaluation concept, the proposed con-cept for innovation-related activities will strongly be based on indicators. But as the discus-sion of appropriate and reliable indicators is too complex to be made the subject of this paper, it focuses on the theoretical structure of the evaluation concept