* The beginning of the Fourth European Programming Period 2007-2013 and its budget preparation has been the subject of much discussion and controversy at the highest administrational and political level in the EU. The projects funded by the European Structural Funds exert significant leverage on the economic development of a region or member country and techniques toimprove their management procedures are always being researched and sought after. Evaluation has long been used in the context of European Operational Program planning and management procedures, in order to provide answers to the basic questions of a program's viability, relevance and effectiveness, and this role is set to increase as specified by the new structural fund management rules of the Fourth Programming Period 2007-2013. This presentation deals with evaluation, not only in its basic form, but also withthe role it can play in the improvement of managing Structural Fund projects. The paper's emphasis is on rail project evaluation and uses, as a case study, the railway projects that are currently being implemented in Greece. Exploiting the opportunity of the recently completed (2005) updates ofthe mid-term evaluation studies by all European operational programs(*), it uses data from the "Railway-Public Transport-Airports" operational program in Greece and presents a sound and straightforward evaluation method that not only provides the answers to the typical evaluative questions (i.e. initial operational program planning, project progress, managerial capacity etc), but also works as a tool for an improvement to the program management procedures used. The results of the study showed that the methodology used gave the opportunity of a complete and thorough insight into the initial project planning process, the project progress monitoring and the project management procedures used. The results were useful both to the project implementing bodies and the program's management hierarchy (EU and Ministry of Transport). The paper's findings are of interest to all dealing with managing projects in the context of the European Structural Funds, butmost importantly to the new member states that are now starting to get involved in the management of European funds. For the covering abstract see ITRD E135582.
Abstract