Belgium – Business and management consultancy and related services – Learning through Experimentation for Adaptive Programming (LEAP) - Producing experimental designs for ERDF/CF/JTF investment in the field of access to quality public services

The overarching goal of this assignment is to prepare the ground for embedding experimentation in National and Regional Partnership Plans (NRPPs) from the outset of the 2028–2034 programming period. To this end, the assignment will structurally bring evaluators and programmers to work together, build capacity on both sides, and provide the EU evaluation system with practical experimentation tools that extend beyond the three participating MS. This assignment focuses on investments on access to public services and shall produce the following outputs: 1. NRPP-ready experimental designs to be implemented in the 2028–2034 programming period in three Member States; 2. a detailed toolkit to support MS in the introduction of experimental designs in 2028-2034 Plans: LEAP Kit (Learning through Experimentation for Adaptive Programming). Access to quality public services is central to the Right to Stay initiative and to the social and territorial cohesion objectives of the EU. Ensuring that services remain within reach of citizens, particularly in lagging and rural regions, is increasingly challenging as budgets tighten and demographic pressures intensify. The constraint is often not only that infrastructure is missing or outdated, but its accessibility and quality is not up to standards. The question of intervention approaches in this regard is underexplored and poorly evidenced. Experimentation through randomised controlled trials (RCTs) - and the analysis of experiment results to identify the causal effects of interventions - offers the most rigorous way to generate this evidence. Improving the capacity to design and conduct experimental designs is even more important in light of the evolving regulatory context. The Commission proposal for the 2028-2034 Multiannual Financial Framework explicitly promotes policy learning and experimentation as a function of both coordinating and managing authorities (Articles 50 and 51 of the proposed Performance Regulation). DG REGIO’s ambition is that experimental designs and adaptive learning mechanisms will be embedded in the NRPPs from the outset of the next programming period.