Anecdotal insights from a quick comparative analysis of National Reform Programmes of the European Semester Introduction Every April, within the context of the European Semester, each Member State publishes its National Reform Programme (NRP), describing the structural reforms and measures undertaken or that will be undertaken in order to comply with the Country-Specific Recommendations (CSRs) received from the European Commission the year before. Until 2020, Member States also reported on the undertaken initiatives to meet the main objectives of the Europe 2020 Strategy, which is Green Deal and is -year strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, whose targets cover employment, climate change and energy sustainability and education, amongst others. The NRPs are a very important exercise for Member States to undertake on an annual basis: they incentivize Member States to set up policies and measures coherent with diverse EU objectives and aligned with the recommendations they receive on their macroeconomic and fiscal performances. However, NRPs remain a forward-looking exercise, as Member states are asked to report the foreseen impacts of their planned policies and measures. Member States are not required to undertake a backward-looking exercise of evaluating the exact performance of their policies, which would assess the causal relationship between the measures and the outcomes, nor to report on these results.1
Why is (ex-post) policy evaluation important? Monitoring and evaluating policies helps decision-making bodies to extract relevant information from past and ongoing activities that can be used as the basis for policy fine-tuning, reorientation and future policy planning2. Evaluating implemented measures provides information on the progress made towards certain targets, but more particularly establishes a causal link between implemented policies and certain results. Such analyses examine the relevance, effectiveness and impacts of regulatory decisions, as well as identify unintended outcomes, reasons for failure, and factors contributing to success3. They can also measure the cost-benefit of implementing particular policies, as policies and spending activities should be fit for purpose and deliver, at a minimum cost, the desired changes4. Without an in-depth evaluation of which policies and reforms conditioned and contributed to which outcomes, national governments and the Commission are unable to associate results with specific successful policies, which leads to the risk that decision-makers draw incorrect conclusions regarding the cause of improvements or deteriorations of policy domains. In the end, ex-post evaluations can serve multiple purposes. They can support decision-making processes by highlighting how policy implementation can be improved through a refinement or adjustment of policies and lead to general learning about which measures work and wh Policy evaluations can also provide accountability to the wider public, by providing transparent assessments of existing government policies.
European Commission (2015), Guidance on the content and format of the National Reform Programmes. GFA Consulting Group (2018), (Quick) Guide to Ex-post Policy Impact Assessment. 3 European Risk Forum (2009), Ex post evaluation assessing regulatory outcomes. 4 European Commission (2021), Better Regulation Guidelines. https://climandcomorg-my.sharepoint.com/personal/emma_climcom_org/Documents/Microsoft Teams Chat Files/2022.01.11_InsightsFromNRPs.docx 1 2