Culture and tourism – Ex post evaluation of Cohesion Policy programmes 2007-2013, focusing on the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the Cohesion Fund (CF)

Summary:

This report summarises the main findings, conclusions and lessons learned from an ex post evaluation conducted within the framework of work package nine (WP9): ‘culture and tourism’, on the use of ERDF funds invested in the sectors of culture and tourism (C&T) in the 2007-2013 Operational PCrogrammes.

Given the pre-existing scattered and rather scant evidence available on the economic effectiveness of European Regional Development Fund investments in culture and tourism, the main objective of the evaluation was to provide factual and concrete evidence on the intervention logic underpinning ERDF interventions in culture and tourism in the 2007-2013 period, the nature and distribution of the interventions, together with their achievements and expected effects for territorial development. A first challenge encountered in the evaluation was how to define the scope of the evaluation, as there is no universally accepted definition of the culture sector. Moreover, while accepted definitions of the tourism sector do exist, tourism activities tend to cut across, and are located within, many different industrial sectors (e.g. transport, information and communication technologies, environment, culture etc).