The effectiveness of projects and programmes financed by the EU Structural Funds depends on the programming, monitoring and evaluation skills available in EU regions. Frequently government officials and experts focus primarily on maximizing funds available to the region but disregard more important quality factors such as the regions ability to effectively use funds to stimulate modernization and innovation. Especially in new Member States the focus on maximizing resources, more often than not, directs available funds to areas and projects that can absorb those fund the easiest, instead of areas where funds would be most effective. Objectives The operation INCASIS - Institutional Capacity for Assessing the Impact of Structural Funds aims at transferring, further developing and putting into practice methods to evaluate the true effectiveness of Structural Funds. The Partnership, which unites institutions from old and new Member States with varying experiences in programming and evaluation, also aims at further developing approaches that help turn evaluation results into regional policy such as the active involvement of decision makers and the general public in the evaluation process. Results The operation improves the capacity of the participating regions to evaluate projects and programmes financed by the Structural Funds. It provides participating regions with a set of policies and tools to conduct evaluations that are not only effective and comprehensive but also comparable with other regions and useful for developing regional policies. In the long run, the operation contributes to making Structural Funds more effective and thus supports regional development and cohesion. Activities include the identification of existing policies and tools for Structural Funds evaluation in each of the partner regions and a description of the regions' needs. Based on meeting, seminars and conferences, partners further develop the evaluation process and implement the new approach in their regions. Partners also elaborate a comprehensive catalogue of tools for the evaluation of Structural Funds and disseminate it to interested stakeholders.