Evaluation of the Financial Assistance Programme for Turkish Cypriot Community

Detailed description of project Back

Responding to an invitation from the Council, the Commission proposed a comprehensive package of aid and trade measures for the Turkish Cypriot community and, as a consequence, on 27 February 2006 the Council adopted Regulation (EC) 389/2006, the “Aid Regulation” establishing an instrument of financial support for encouraging the economic development of the Turkish Cypriot community. The main objectives of the programme are: to promote social and economic development of the Turkish Cypriot community; to develop and restructure of infrastructure, in particular in the areas of energy, transport, environment, telecommunication and water supply; to foster reconciliation confidence-building measures and support civil society; to bring the Turkish Cypriot community closer to the EU, through information on the EU as well as contacts between Turkish Cypriot and other EU citizens; to help the Turkish Cypriot community to prepare for the implementation of the acquis in case of a comprehensive settlement of the Turkish problem. Following an initial allocation of € 259 million in 2006, an additional €61.5 million have been made available in the period from 2009 to 2012. The bulk of the projects funded under the 2006 budget are finalised by the end of 2012.

The primary objective of this strategic/interim evaluation is to provide relevant findings, conclusions and recommendations to the Commission by an overall programme evaluation as a follow-up of the 2009 evaluation. Its specific objectives are:

• Providing an assessment of the intervention logic of the Aid Regulation to the TCc;
• Providing a judgement on the performance (either actual or expected) of assistance, particularly as regards its relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, impact and sustainability. The judgement for each evaluation criteria should differentiate two levels of sources of evidence and analysis the programming level and the implementing level;
• Making recommendations about the application of the 2006 Aid Regulation to anticipated future needs of the TCc and about the future implementation of the assistance programme, particularly suggesting areas of concentration, medium and long-term strategies, suitable progress indicators and implementation methodologies.

Type of services provided

The B&S Consortium provides the services of a team of four experts of which one is contracted by PROMAN.

The evaluation methodology consists of initial data collection, document research and literature survey, semi-structured interviews with public authorities, beneficiary institutions, and European Commission representatives.

An Evaluation Matrix is developed regrouping the key evaluation questions around the three specific objectives and is defining for each question the judgement criteria. The data analysis is based on this matrix using indicators defined during programming and refined during implementation.

The Evaluation is typically conducted in different phases:

• Inception Phase including briefing in Brussels;
• Field phase with collection of data;
• Desk based analysis, synthesis and draft report writing;
• Draft Final Report commentary and approval Phase;
• Presentation in Brussels and Cyprus.