52004DC0824

Brussels, 22.12.2004

COM(2004) 824 final

FINAL REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL

on the Daphne Programme (2000 - 2003) {SEC(2004) 1595}

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report presents the progress made by the Daphne Programme since its approval in January 2000 and a summary of its main achievements, as required by Article 9(2) of the Decision. Daphne aims to address a widespread and growing concern at both public and political levels about the issue of violence. All types of violence against children, young people and women are covered, including domestic violence, violence in schools, violence towards minority groups such as homosexuals, handicapped people, ethnic minorities, etc.

The Daphne Programme is one of the building blocks of the European Commission for combating crime, as part of the Union’s political ambition to set up an area of freedom, security and justice. Other programmes and actions exist in order to fight specific offences, such as illegal content of Internet, trafficking in human beings or various types of discrimination. Daphne liaises with them to ensure adequate co-ordination and consistency.

The programme

During their seven years of existence (1997-2003), the Daphne Initiative and the subsequent Programme met with a response far greater than could have been expected. More than 2200 proposals were received requesting around €195 million. This overwhelming response shows that the Programme clearly meets a deeply felt need within the voluntary sector. A total of 303 projects were funded during the same period for a total EC budget of €31 million.

In order to achieve this in the best possible conditions, the Commission pays particular attention to monitoring progress and evaluating the results achieved by the projects funded. All projects are monitored and assessed individually during their implementation phase.

The results

The long list of project activities, including innovative methods for prevention, co-operation, exchanges, networking, developing new models and sharing best practice, have already started to have multiplier effects on NGO and institutional activities in Europe (as evidence by the study in Annex).

It shows that organisations have gained greatly from their participation in European partnerships. Whether by learning more about the substantive issues or by improving co-ordination and management skills or their external image, they all came out with increased stature. The networking mechanism in itself already has an impact: by bringing groups into contact with one another and prompting them to collaborate, it has made a significant difference to the work of organisations which, by their nature, more often tend to be in competition. In turn, these partnerships have led to more effective programming, moving away from duplication and wasted resources. As a consequence, the Daphne Programme can be seen as successful in continuing the mobilisation of the NGO sector at all levels, resulting in many new partnerships and alliances that are working together for more comprehensive European policies on violence.

For the purpose of this report, an evaluation of the seven years of activities of Daphne (1997-2003) was carried out (see annexe).[1]

Some of the most interesting findings are :

- There is a reasonable balance in the funded projects between the various categories of beneficiaries: children, young people and women ;

- The 220 projects analysed in detail produced 700 tangible outputs (e.g. studies, good practice guides, training manuals, CD-ROM, TV or radio spots);

- In 65% of the projects under the Daphne Programme, the objective is the exchange of good practice. In terms of results, 34% of outputs produced contributed to the achievement of this objective. This illustrates the added value of Daphne, which reinforced the dissemination of a number of good practices at the level of the European Union. In addition, 1 project in 2 produced results that are directly applicable, such as field actions or training modules.

- With regard to the impact of these results on the project partners, 66% of the projects have now adopted new practices in their current work. 80% of the partners recognise that their expertise, know-how and involvement in transnational networks/partnerships have improved.

- In terms of the impact on the end beneficiaries (children, young people and women), in more than half of the projects, these populations benefited from better access to assistance and improved their capacity to face the situations by themselves. This result is of primary importance, because it goes beyond the concept of assistance to victims towards the concept of rehabilitation and empowerment.

- The last finding that is worth mentioning is that 12% of the projects had an impact on legislation and/or led to policy change. Given the fact that the primary aim of Daphne is not to propose legislative measures or to change policies, this is a side-effect due to the strong commitment and dedication of some organisations. This can be seen as a plus.

As will be detailed in this report, some findings of the final evaluation revealed areas where there was room for improvement. Some of those had already been anticipated in the structure of the Daphne II Programme, such as the creation of a helpdesk or the increased focus on dissemination.

PURPOSE OF THE REPORT

Article 9(3) of Parliament and Council Decision 293/2000/EC[2] setting up the Daphne Programme requires the Commission to present an evaluation report to the European Parliament and the Council, at the end of the programme.

This report presents the achievements of the Daphne Programme since its approval in January 2000, including an in-depth analysis of the results achieved under the former Daphne Initiative (1997-1999) and the first two years of implementation of the Daphne Programme, and an analysis of the projects funded in 2002 and 2003, but not their achievements as they have not yet been completed. As a consequence, this report covers seven years of activities, corresponding to 303 projects and involving more than 1500 organisations. It therefore goes beyond the requirement of Article 9(3) of Decision 293/2000/EC.

RESULTS AND IMPACT OF DAPHNE

For the purpose of this report, an evaluation of the seven years of Daphne activities (1997-2003) was carried out, the methodology of which is explained in annex 1. The main characteristic of this study is that it is exhaustive: all projects (303) from the Initiative (1997-1999) and the Programme (2000-2003) have been analysed. The conclusions were as follows:

“The Initiative and Programme objectives were and remain relevant to the needs at their origin i.e. protecting children, young people and women from violence and preventing it. Both the outputs and the impacts contribute to achieving each objective of the Daphne Programme, so confirming its effectiveness. The efficiency of the programme is evidenced by the impressive outputs and impacts, compared to the modest resources allocated. Their sustainability once the projects have ended is rather weak, because of insufficiently planned and targeted dissemination and difficulties with post-project funding”.

The findings can be summarised as follows:

[pic]

Relevance

The relevance of the Daphne Programme is evaluated by the extent to which the objectives are and remain appropriate to the context, i.e. to the social needs the programme is meant to satisfy.

Relevance of the Daphne objectives to the social needs

The fight against violence combines a large number of initiatives and actions. Daphne does not aim to directly reduce the number of victims of violence. Instead, the programme aims to support organisations whose actions contribute to protecting against violence, preventing it and assisting victims. This explains the key role played by NGOs in Daphne since its origin.

The Daphne objectives were defined in general terms so that they would be valid for many different types of violence. There are six Daphne objectives:

- Support to multidisciplinary networks;

- Exchange of good practice;

- Studies, research and data collection;

- Information campaigns;

- Information sources;

- Recognition and reporting of violence.

By being independent from the areas of violence covered, these objectives are not influenced by priorities set annually on aspects of violence. In addition, these objectives are instruments rather than objectives, stricto sensu . In fact, they contribute to the more general meta-objectives that implicitly underpin the programme, i.e. European response to violence through networking and exchange of best practice, prevention and protection of victims, increased awareness.

Effectiveness

The effectiveness of the Daphne Programme is assessed by the extent to which the outputs and impacts contribute to the achievement of the Daphne objectives.

For each project, a link was made between its outputs and the Daphne objectives they support. Out of 699 outputs, 601 strongly or very strongly support the Daphne objectives as follows:

[pic]

[pic]The above graph should be interpreted as follows: 15% of the outputs contribute to the objective ‘Support to multi-disciplinary networks’, and they are composed of 38% of “Conferences, seminars and workshops”, 16% of “studies, reports and books” and 11% of “Information materials”.

The striking figure here is that the objective “exchange of good practice” is supported by more than a third of the outputs. This shows a) the importance of that objective for the participants and b) the real added value of the Daphne Programme in transferring knowledge from country to country and from organisation to organisation throughout Europe.

Looking at the diagram the other way round, it appears that encouraging people to work together (by “Conference, seminars and workshops”) is the output that contributes most to the objectives and promotes all of them. The output “Studies, reports and books” also significantly contributes to all the objectives.

It is also interesting to note that “Training packages and manuals” has an influence on three objectives, confirming the need to keep training high on the agenda.

In addition, each programme objective is also supported by impacts as shown in point 3.3 of the Annex. It is clear from that diagram that the main impacts support one or more programme objectives and that all programme objectives are supported by impacts.

The effectiveness of the Daphne Programme is thus ensured by the contributions of both outputs and impacts.

Efficiency

The programme efficiency measures the relation between inputs on one hand and outputs and impacts on the other hand, with a view to assessing the value for money.

A programme like Daphne is, however, not a production unit, the costs and benefits of which can be precisely estimated in monetary terms. Although most of the inputs are known – in terms of funds - it is meaningless to put a monetary value on the outputs or impacts: e.g. the value of enabling children and women to protect themselves better and prevent violence cannot be expressed in commercial terms. We can, however, gain indications of the usefulness of the programme, its outputs and impacts.

We have assessed efficiency by following a pragmatic approach, making the best use of the different kinds of information available and focusing on the utility of the programme. The representative sample of 148 completed projects analysed can be characterised by the following basic facts and figures:

- The sample represents a total budget of nearly €20 million (up to 2001), i.e. about €133,000 per project and €23,500 per participant.

- The EU funding represents some 75% of these budgets, i.e. some €17,600 per participant. On average this means the EU is funding 2 full-time equivalents (FTE) for each project for one year or 0.35 FTE per participating organisation, representing on average 0.8% of their personnel.

- For two thirds of the projects, the remaining 25% of the budget is covered by internal funds only. Ten percent of the projects only have access to external funding and one project out of four declares a mix of internal and external funds. The funding is often complemented by extra work from the participating NGOs as well as by volunteers. The volume of this effort is obviously difficult to evaluate.

- On average, each project generated 5 outputs that contributed significantly to achieving the six main programme objectives. A very impressive volume of material was disseminated by 98% of the projects and events were organised by 90% of them. The outputs and their dissemination contributed to producing impacts on target groups, end beneficiaries, the general public and decision-makers.

- The 148 projects analysed involved 1227 organisations. Participation to a project had an impact on 97% of them, mainly in terms of improved expertise, improved networking capacities or adoption of good practice. Participation in Daphne has therefore had a definite and positive effect on these organisations.

These achievements therefore represent substantial value, particularly in view of the limited funding provided by the Commission. The evaluation did check whether there was any significant relationship between the budget size, on the one hand, and the nature and frequency of outputs and impacts on the other, and came to the conclusion that there was none. This is, at least partly, due to the fact that most participants in Daphne consider the budget as a tool. They invest voluntary effort and attribute high value to the project results.

From the evidence above (and others detailed in Annex), we can state that the programme is efficient, i.e. with limited EU support, significant achievements and impacts were realised.

Daphne implementation and delivery mechanisms

Co-ordinators were asked to give their opinion on the Daphne submission and contract procedures, the Daphne website, the support from Daphne during the project and the evaluation and monitoring systems. Complete data can be found in Annex 1. However, one element is worth mentioning here, this is that for most of the topics, at least two thirds of the project co-ordinators are satisfied. Overall, the levels of satisfaction were slightly lower for the Initiative than for the Programme.

The analysis of the level of satisfaction of “transparency of the selection process” and of “quality of EC support during the preparation phase” over time shows that a larger proportion of project co-ordinators were satisfied over the last few years (from 2001 to 2003) than in previous years, which is encouraging.

+++++ TABLE +++++

|1997 |1998 |1999 |2000 |2001 |2002 |2003 | |Transparency of selection process |58% |52% |33% |50% |66% |61% |63% | |Quality of EC support during preparation phase |35% |61% |59% |56% |63% |79% |83% | | CONCLUSIONS

The purpose of the Daphne Programme is to support the work of organisations (including NGOs) and public local authorities in protecting women and children and in preventing violence against them. Daphne adds value at European Community level to this work and encourages the exchange of ideas and best practice through the formation of networks and partnerships and the implementation of pilot projects. These provide opportunities for learning, for the sharing of information, the transfer of skills and comprehensive coverage of problem areas, all of which are designed to be in the best interests of those who suffer violence.

In addition, Daphne supports actions which raise awareness about violence among the general public and those at risk, as well as actions involving research and seminars on the subject of violence. Importantly, all this work is done through new European networks, and with a view to collaborative European action and best-practice exchange.

Experience gained by the implementation of the Daphne programme together with an extensive impact assessment of completed projects, a survey of ongoing projects and interviews with stakeholders produced the following conclusions:

- “The Initiative and Programme objectives were and remain relevant to the needs at their origin i.e. protecting children, young people and women from violence and preventing it. Both the outputs and the impacts contribute to achieving each objective of the Daphne Programme, so confirming its effectiveness. The efficiency of the programme is evidenced by the impressive outputs and impacts, compared to the modest resources allocated. Their sustainability once the projects have ended is rather weak, because of insufficiently planned and targeted dissemination and difficulties with post-project funding”.

- With its high level of response (more than 2200 proposals received, requesting around €195 million), Daphne clearly meets a deeply felt need within society.

- With around 700 outputs, the 303 funded projects have provided an initial response and have seriously contributed to raising awareness among the target groups concerned. They have also played a part in the empowerment of a number of victims, increased awareness of how to access assistance, reinforced the services offered and contributed to the understanding of some mechanisms of violence, etc.

- These outputs have had an impact not only on the partners, target groups and end beneficiaries, but also on the slowly changing social perceptions of violence and the development of EU and national policies. New models and methodologies are being explored and developed by public institutions, all contributing to the creation of a common framework and convergence of policies throughout the Member States.

- Another finding worth mentioning is that 12% of the projects had an impact on legislation and/or led to policy change. Given the fact that the primary aim of Daphne is not to propose legislative measures or to change policies, this is a side-effect due to the strong commitment and dedication of some organisations. This can be seen as a plus.

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[4] OJ L 34, 9.2.2000, p. 1.