The Contracting Authority would like a contract that includes an evaluation of what importance participation in Interreg (the European, territorial cooperation programmes) has had for Norwegian areas. The evaluation shall particularly highlight the question around the usefulness of participation and how sustainable the initiatives are. As a starting point, the evaluation shall be carried out for programme period IV (2007-2013) and possibly programme period III (2000-2006). For further details on the assignment, see Annex 1 of the contract.

Norway is well into the 5th 7-year period of Interreg, which lasts until 2020. Before the start of a new period, from 2021, the ministry would like to assess continued Norwegian participation. The starting point for continued Norwegian participation is that the programmes shall contribute to Norwegian regional policy goal achievement. The evaluation will be one of several elements in the total knowledge basis for assessing continued Norwegian participation. The ministry shall assess the following problems:

— what changes in the programmes´ organisation ought to be proposed from the Norwegian side?

— shall the organisation of the Norwegian participation be changed?

— shall individual programmes be prioritised up or down?

The decision basis for this assessment must be available before the new programmes start the programming work, a couple of years before the new period, i.e. the evaluation ought to be completed at the latest 15.1.2019.

Previous evaluations of Interreg have given a lot of knowledge of contribution, activities and, to some degree, we also have knowledge of results. Refer to the mappings that, amongst others, Leknes et al (2011) and Schou and Indset (2015) carried out. We have, however, little knowledge of what effect the contribution has for the different thematic priorities. It is this knowledge gap that we would now like to close.

See Annex 1 of the contract (the Contracting Authority's description of the assignment) for further details on the assignment.

Up to 1 700 000 NOK excluding VAT has been put aside for the evaluation. Tenders that exceed this limit will be rejected.