NSDS Evaluation

Faced with a wide diversity of approaches within national NSDS, weak vertical links and many common challenges, the Commission sees a need to pool experiences on best implementation practices. It therefore wishes to develop tools for a more systematic identification and exchange of good practices and further develop synergies and complementarities between NSDS and EU SDS.

Therefore, the Commission is planning to launch a support scheme to promote peer reviews of national SDS. In this scheme, the Commission would provide financial support to countries willing to undertake such reviews. Under this scheme a country’s NSDS would be scrutinised by a number of other countries on its strong and weak points and suggestions would be made for improvement. The scheme will be launched through an open call for proposals addressed to the Member States.

The methodology for conducting peer reviews will be flexible enough to adapt to the different needs of EU25 countries that are often in very different phases of developing a NSDS. Some Member States may have only recently started developing their first NSDS while others may have adopted several consecutive strategies already. It will leave the choice for stringency of the assessment to the discretion of the reviewed country.

Despite the need for flexibility the methodology will contain a number of essential issues to be analysed in each peer review. These include issues of:

• Process : ministries involved; instruments and methods used for policy integration; consultation and involvement of stakeholders, etc.

• Content : vision and principles; level of policy integration, priority issues; treatment of the international dimension, etc.

• Outcomes : impacts of NSDS on decision making, on reversing unsustainable trends; on policy coherence and transparency, etc.

• Monitoring and reporting : indicators; reporting requirements, reviews, etc.