Cohesion Policy post-2027: What Experts Really Told Us — Insights After the t33 Workshop

Written By Alessandro Valenza
Publishing 09 December 2025

Following our workshop of 13 June 2025 - which brought together fifty experts from administrations, academia, cooperation bodies and evaluation specialists - we received a remarkable number of comments, clarifications and reflections.

If you missed our article presenting the outcome of the workshop, you can read it here: Towards 2028–2034: Five Roundtables on the Future of Cohesion Policy.

This second article builds directly on the feedback collected. Our goal is simple: to give an honest, nuanced and grounded account of what experts see as the real opportunities and challenges of the post-2027 Cohesion Policy reform.


     1.  A  Positive and Encouraging Reaction

Several participants told us that the workshop summary accurately captured the main points of the discussion. Cinzia Lombardo noted that she ‘fully recognised the themes emerging from the roundtables’, particularly the balance between ambition and feasibility that characterises the Commission’s proposal. This alignment is reassuring, it confirms that the workshop resonated and that the debate is moving in the right direction.

Beyond the substantive comments, we also received helpful editorial suggestions. Bruno Robino, in particular, provided insights that strengthened the clarity and accessibility of the document, making it easier for non-experts to follow the discussion and engage in the broader debate. Such contributions, although formal in nature, are essential to ensure that reflections on the future of Cohesion Policy reach a wide and diverse audience.

     2. FNLC and the Shift to Performance: Ambition Meets Reality

Financing Not Linked to Costs (FNLC) generated lively debate. Experts clearly support the ambition, but also highlight important conditions:

• Reliable and comparable data are still missing in many regions.

• Robust indicators require time and technical investment.

• Programming skills are uneven across administrations

• Verification and risk management capacities need reinforcement.

Silvia Vignetti appreciated the clarity of the summary but stressed an essential point: we need to understand how FNLC can work in practice, especially where administrative foundations are weaker. As noted by Silvia, while FNLC can be a powerful tool to streamline delivery and reinforce a performance culture, it should still be approached with caution. Its effectiveness depends on the availability of reliable data, the clarity of intervention logic and the administrative capacity to define and verify credible milestones and targets. FNLC is therefore promising, but not universally applicable across all contexts.

Gaincarlo Vecchi also noted that the broader shift towards performance, including FNLC and more strategic delivery choices, is constrained by persistent data gaps, which complicate calibration of indicators and ex-ante assessments. Administrations that can leverage data systems and AI tools to support policy foresight will be better positioned to navigate the shift towards performance.

Ruggero Tabossi provided an important perspective from the pre-accession context, where FNLC-type mechanisms have already become the norm. He notes that candidate countries are now implementing ‘Reform Agendas’, financed through the Reform and Growth Facility — a mix of grants and loans that is likely to replace the current IPA structure. This model, similar to the PNRR logic, links disbursement to milestones and targets and represents a continuation of the budget-support approach introduced under IPA II with the Sector Reform Contracts. According to Ruggero, this shift has progressively led to the disappearance of operational programmes and Managing Authorities, resulting in a loss of the institutional capacities traditionally associated with Cohesion Policy. The increasing centralisation of programming and spending in the hands of the European Commission — and the prominent role of IFIs — leaves beneficiaries with less influence over strategic choices. Seen from the candidate-country perspective, this approach may be the most workable option, but it clearly marks a departure from the principles of subsidiarity and shared management. As he observes, Recovery Plans are, in essence, large-scale budget-support mechanisms, and pre-accession countries have been operating in this logic long before the pandemic.

     3. Interreg: Not Only Trust and Cooperation — Also Development

Our original article highlighted the relational value of ETC: trust, stability and mutual understanding. While this is important, several experts urged us to broaden the framing.

Giancarlo Vecchi also stressed that ETC is not only a space for cooperation and trust-building, but a genuine driver of economic development — supporting integrated labour markets, cross-border infrastructure, shared services, innovation ecosystems, competitiveness and investment. At the same time, Interreg retains its distinctive bottom-up character, promoting local development dynamics and fostering social innovation across border regions.

     4. Administrative Capacity: The Essential Infrastructure

Across all feedback, one word dominates: capacity.
Experts stressed that:

• results-based mechanisms require technical expertise,- proxy indicators are useful only when methodologically robust,

• qualitative and participatory approaches demand specialist skills,

• digital reporting systems require investment and learning.

More specifically, several contributors also highlighted the widening gap between the skills currently available within public administrations and those required to navigate a results-driven policy cycle. As Enrico Coletta noted, programming with milestones and targets, increasing the use of financial instruments, and integrating ex-ante evaluations at both macro and micro levels all demand competencies that are not yet widespread in many managing authorities.

Enrico emphasised that bridging this gap will require flexible digital systems supported by advanced AI applications. These tools can help administrations model scenarios, build digital twins of investment programmes, simulate adjustments in implementation choices and estimate potential effects on indicators and performance frameworks. Such capacities could progressively enable public authorities to operate with greater strategic foresight, analytical rigour and agility.

In essence, administrative capacity should not be seen as a support measure, but as a core pillar of Cohesion Policy, essential for effective implementation.

Giancarlo Vecchi offered several valuable observations touching on both the analytical and operational dimensions of the reform. He emphasised that the ability to capture systemic and long-term impacts depends heavily on the institutional capabilities of managing authorities, and that qualitative, participatory and mixed-method approaches require competencies that remain unevenly distributed across administrations. He also noted the need to consider different governance models, tailored to context and intervention type, yet underpinned by a common principle of collaboration. In this perspective, embedding continuous learning processes will be essential to strengthen trust among actors and ensure the long-term sustainability of interventions.

     5. Monitoring and Evaluation: High Ambition, Uneven Readiness

The new MFF proposal implicitly relies on monitoring and evaluation as the engine of budget execution under performance conditions. Experts point to major gaps:

• Data quality and interoperability.

• Ability to capture systemic impacts.

• Competence gaps in mixed-method evaluations and proxy indicators.

Again, the shift toward performance-based funding must be accompanied by substantial investments in knowledge, data and evaluation skills.

Cinzia Lombardo also highlighted the importance of reinforcing the policy follow-up phase of evaluations. In her view, monitoring and evaluation should not only generate insights but also ensure that recommendations translate into concrete adjustments in programme design and delivery. This reinforces the need for administrations to improve the way they use evaluation results throughout the policy cycle.

Marco Pompili also drew attention to the recent publication of the Proposal for the Performance Regulation (COM/2025/545 final), which clarifies the evaluation framework for the next period. He notes that some elements remain consistent with the current approach — including the non-mandatory nature of ex-ante evaluations and the continued use of standard evaluation criteria — but three novelties stand out.

First, Member States will be required to carry out at least one interim evaluation of the National and Regional Partnership Plans within three years of implementation, reintroducing a practice largely absent in recent programming cycles. Second, the Regulation places a strong emphasis on impact evaluation using quantitative and counterfactual methods, a positive signal but potentially too narrow if taken as an exclusive requirement. Third, Article 19 introduces an important innovation by explicitly allowing the processing of administrative data for control groups, removing a long-standing obstacle to counterfactual methods, especially for ESF interventions. These elements, taken together, signal a more structured but also more demanding evaluation framework for the post-2027 period.

     6. A Strong Message from Participants: Realism and Trust

Among all feedback received, one reflection by Fabio Drago stood out: ‘Simplification is possible, but we must stay realistic.’ The success of the reform depends on mutual trust between the Commission and Member States, and on designing measures that are both ambitious and practicable.

Conclusion

Three final messages emerge:
1. Performance is the right direction, but it cannot be improvised.
2. Interreg must be recognised as an economic driver, not only a cooperation tool.
3. Administrative capacity is the decisive factor.

The dialogue continues, and we remain committed to integrating expert feedback to strengthen the debate on the future of Cohesion Policy.