The catalytic effects of EC RTD evaluation activities on trans-European co-operation

The European Commission's RTD programme evaluation efforts have hard multip le catalytic effects on evaluation in Europe and beyond through several ini tiatives: (i) regularly evaluating one of the world's largest and most comp lex research programmes; (ii) bringing together many European Experts; (iii ) supporting studies in methods; and (iv) aiding a structured dialogue with European and other evaluation experts (including in the US [NSF] and Japan [STA]). The Commission has helped create, partly through the European RTD Evaluatio n Network, a European evaluation community, It supported the exchange of go od practice and discussion on methods. All this has helped train a generati on of evaluators, and demand for evaluation expertise led to university cou rses being offered. The European Research Area idea! poses new challenges.