Evaluation of EC support to partner countries in the area of energy : Final report

This evaluation assesses the relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, impact and sustainability of the European Commission’s support to its partner countries in the energy sector. It covers interventions designed or implemented during the 1996-2007 period in all the external cooperation partner countries. This scope of the evaluation is extremely broad and heterogeneous for three major reasons. First, the European Commission’s communications analysis shows that the Commission’s interventions in the energy sector have aimed to contribute to three very different goals: - Improving access to energy in developing countries as a means of reducing poverty; - Securing energy supplies to the EU; - Improving nuclear safety in the Former Soviet Union (FSU). The first goal is increasingly perceived as an important dimension of the fight against poverty; the two others address vital stakes for European citizens. Ranking these different goals by order of importance has no real meaning. The order in which they are presented in the report has no specific significance and has deliberately been varied...