This report was directed by the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities (CFE) led by Lamia Kamal-Chaoui, Director. It was co-ordinated by Maria Varinia Michalun and supervised by Dorothée Allain-Dupré, Head of Unit, Decentralisation, Public Investment and Subnational Finance in CFE and Daniel Gerson, Head of the Public Employment and Management Unit in the OECD Directorate for Public Governance (GOV). The report was written by Maria Varinia Michalun and Yingyin Wu from the Unit for Decentralisation, Public Investment and Subnational Finance in CFE and Daniel Gerson, Dónal Mulligan and Natalia Nolan Flecha from the Public Employment and Management Unit in GOV. The report includes substantial input from Judit Kálmán, development policy expert and Research Fellow from the Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and Giorgio Centurelli, EU structural funds senior expert at the Italian National Technical Secretariat of Plans for Administrative Reinforcement. The report benefited from valuable comments from Isabelle Chatry, and Isidora Zapata from CFE, and Paulo Magina and Matthieu Cahen from GOV. Additional guidance was provided by Rudiger Ahrend, Head of the Economic Analysis, Statistics and Multi-level Governance Division of CFE with additional input from Edwin Lau, Head of the Budgeting and Public Expenditure Division in GOV.
The OECD extends its warm thanks to the staff, project teams and stakeholders of the five Managing Authorities for their comments, input and dynamic contributions to this project: the Managing Authority for the Regions in Growth Operational Programme in Bulgaria; the Managing Authority of the Competitiveness and Cohesion Operational Programme in Croatia; the Managing Authority of the Transport Infrastructure, Environment and Sustainable Development Operational Programme in Greece; the Managing Authority of the Regional Operational Programme for the Lubelskie Voivodeship in Poland; and the Managing Authority for the Regional Operational Programme for Extremadura in Spain. Thanks are also extended to the Directorate General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO) Unit E.1 Administrative Capacity Building and European Solidarity Fund, and the relevant Geographic Units. The comments received from the Delegates of the OECD Regional Development Policy Committee during the Committee discussion on 22 November 2019 are also gratefully acknowledged.
Thanks are also given to Pauline Arbel for preparing the cover image of the report and to Pilar Philip and François Iglesias who prepared the final publication.