5th CoR Monitoring Report on Europe 2020

Every year, the Committee of the Regions' Monitoring Report on Europe 2020 looks at the implementation of the Europe 2020 strategy over the past twelve months, as seen by EU cities and regions. In doing so, the CoR aims to improve the ownership, focus and effectiveness of Europe's growth and job strategy, while fulfilling the commitments undertaken in the current cooperation agreement with the European Commission.

This year's report is particularly relevant since it is the last report before the major review of the Europe 2020 strategy, scheduled for early 2015.

The report analyses key aspects of the strategy's progress in the past twelve months, as seen by the local and regional levels. This 2014 issue includes four thematic chapters:

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  An update on the main trends in regional development, in particular on increasing regional disparities since the beginning of the economic crisis.

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  A selection of concrete cases of a multilevel governance approach in the design and implementation of policies related to Europe 2020.

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  An analysis of the main documents of the European Semester (NRPs, CSRs) assessing the role they attribute to local and regional authorities and whether the territorial dimension of Europe 2020 is taken into account.

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  A survey on the role of LRAs in the finalisation of Partnership Agreements, the strategic documents specifying how the national authorities plan to use funding from the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) between 2014 and 2020.