The health and childcare evaluation was commissioned by the Financial Mechanism Office and conducted by COWI between January and November 2011. It was based on an in-depth study of 16 projects in 5 countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland and Romania). The EEA and Norway Grants 2004-09 supported 234 projects overall within the health and childcare sector, totalling €167 million.
Key findings include:
•Almost all evaluated projects achieved planned deliverables, with some exceeding predefined objectives;
•The projects addressed relevant EU challenges, national priorities and local needs — they have had a demonstrable impact on improved health and social conditions for the various target groups and made a significant contribution to the institutional capacity of health and childcare sector;
•Administrative procedures regarded as time-consuming and complex;
•Establishing partnerships proved challenging with limited participation from relevant donor state partners.
This demonstrates the need to provide more structured support for establishing partnerships. The key recommendations are currently being followed-up: greater delegation to the beneficiary states in the current round should help to simplify administrative procedures, and the comprehensive preparatory work undertaken to find suitable partners should strengthen the bilateral dimension.