Evaluation of the EU Strategy on adaptation to climate change

The European Commission’s evaluation of the EU Adaptation Strategy finds that the strategy has delivered on its objectives to promote action by Member States, ‘climate-proof’ action at the EU level and support better-informed decision-making. Progress has been recorded against each of its eight individual actions, including the development of the online platform Climate-ADAPT. Nevertheless, the evaluation outlines how Europe is still vulnerable to climate impacts within and outside its borders and suggests areas where more work needs to be done to prepare vulnerable regions and sectors.

Key findings from the evaluation:

The evaluation was carried out using workshops, a targeted stakeholder survey and a public consultation. The aim of the evaluation was to examine the implementation and performance of the Strategy, looking at its relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, coherence and EU added value. Also, the evaluation included the ‘adaptation preparedness scoreboard’ for measuring Member States’ level of readiness based on qualitative, process-based indicators.

EEA contributed to the evaluation of the EU Adaptation Strategy. On Action 5, a detailed evaluation of the European Climate Adaptation Platform (Climate-ADAPT) (EEA, 2018) was conducted by the EEA, with the support of the ETC/CCA, looking at the same evaluation criteria as the overall evaluation of the EU Adaptation Strategy.  

Results of the evaluation were published in November 2018.