EFFECTS OF ADMINISTRATIVE CAPACITY BUILDING EFFORTS ON MEMBER STATES’ MANAGEMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION OF ESI FUNDS. A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE IN ITALY AND POLAND IN THE 2021-2027 PROGRAMMING PERIOD.

Cohesion Policy is one of the key policies of the European Union and the Union’s main investment policy, representing one third of the EU’s budget. The achievement of the policy’s goals requires the involvement of a diversity of actors, across different levels of government, such as national and regional authorities but also non-governmental and civil society organisations. As such, the policy’s multilevel governance and partnership-based approach require expertise from every entity involved. On the side of public institutions, a key pre-requisite is that of administrative capacity. Against the policy’s complex governance arrangements, decision-making processes and operational procedures, administrative capacity has been identified as a key determinant for the policy’s effectiveness. Against this backdrop, this thesis investigates the effects deriving from the administrative capacity building activities financed by the European Union under the ESI funds, with a particular focus on the national operational programmes funded by Technical Assistance in the two main beneficiary countries, Italy and Poland. An analysis of the differences between the 2014-2020 and 2021-2027 programming periods is carried out to appraise if the challenges highlighted in the ex-post evaluation of the 2014-2020 period have been incorporated in the design of the 2021-2027 programmes and to what effect. A comparative analysis is presented to see how the two States implement their Technical Assistance programmes in the two different administrative contexts. Administrative capacity will be analysed through the proxy of the absorption rate of ESI funds, in order to see if a change of performance has incurred between the periods under investigation and if the change can be linked to administrative capacity building.