Ex-ante impact assessment of research programmes: The experience of the European Union's 7th Framework Programme

While the EU has over ten years of experience with the formal ex-post evaluation of the Framework Programmes (FP), its experience with the ex-ante impact assessment (IA) of those programmes is much more recent. In 2005, the Commission published the ex-ante IA of FP7, which runs from 2007 to 2013 and has a budget of about €50 billion. It was the first ex-ante IA ever of a FP and in fact of any EU policy initiative in the field of research. This paper first briefly discusses the origin of EU IA, and how it compares to regulatory IA elsewhere. It then goes on to answer the following questions regarding the FP7 IA: What conclusions were reached on the possible impact of FP7? Through what methodologies was evidence collected? And what lessons were learned? Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.