ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies issues and challenges arising through European Union (EU) regulations and guidelines governing the implementation of Structural Funds (SF) to the achievement of a results orientation approach, in an attempt to move away from a focus on compliance with rules, spending of allocated budgets, and production of outputs. Although results-oriented management of Cohesion Policy (CP) has been set up, especially after the fifth SF reform, there are legitimate doubts about the extent to which the focus on results has been implemented in practice and achieved by regional and national authorities. More specifically, the chapter focuses on monitoring and evaluation – which are the main tools of results-oriented management – arguing that the way in which the separation between monitoring and evaluation have been portrayed in EU documents and promoted by bureaucratic practices has had negative consequences with respect to achieving a true results orientation.
