European projects European funding structure and a project case study

Abstract

Nowadays, European funding represents great support for organizations having a purpose in line with the European strategy for the period 2014-2020. The main purpose of this elaborate is to state that European Funds produce positive social-economic impacts for those Countries that, through organizations, can receive them and be able to implement the proposed projects. Moreover, the thesis aims to provide a general but consistent overview of the European Funding structure and how various national and local entities can get their projects financed. To face those matters, I decided to split the thesis into two macro-categories: the first part “An introduction to the European financial tools” and the second part “The case study: ihavet project”.

The first part of this elaborate lends an acute overview on the mechanism behind the European funding system, with the purpose to provide the greatest possible understanding of how and how many financial aids, local and national organizations can obtain from Europe. With this purpose, all the process phases behind the preparation and application of the project are deep exposed. This first part ends by addressing the fundamental concept of Project Cycle Management (PCM), which is been introduced to improve the project quality and management, as well as their effectiveness. This theoretical overview is useful to better understand the project management of the Case Study.

The second part of this paper aims to validate the effectiveness of the theoretical concepts, previously presented, to the practical case IHAVET, a project that got funded by the Erasmus+ program. I joined IHAVET during my internship in Belgium at ECEPAA, a Belgian NGO. To correctly introduce the case study, firstly it is useful to propose how the Erasmus+ program is structured and how it works. This elaborate, by providing the project management of IHAVET, confirms the importance of all the theoretical process presented during the related part and, by providing a deep analysis of groups target chosen and of the expected results, it also confirms the positive impact that EU projects are having on the European society.