The Community Support Framework for Portugal for the 2000-2006 (CSF III) period led to the implementation of the Commission’s proposals accepted by the Berlin European Council (1999) and developed in the various legislative instruments adopted after the approval of the “Agenda 2000: For a stronger and wider Union “[COM(97) 2000].

To respond to the social, economic and territorial development problems of the country, the III CSF mobilized some 42.200 million Euros, in order to promote development and structural adjustment of less developed regions, to support the economic and social conversion of areas facing structural difficulties; to support the adaptation and modernization of policies and systems of education, training and employment.

The Mid-term Evaluation Study of the III CSF was prepared according to a structured methodology as a synthesis of three perspectives of analysis: (i) extension of the areas of global assessment of the III CSF fully independent of the mid-term evaluations of the Operational Programmes that integrate it, (ii) integration of the results of the macroeconomic impacts of the III CSF, especially from the point of view of its junction with the results of evaluating the relevance and appropriateness of the strategy and of the effectiveness evaluation, (iii) development of tools for synthesising the evaluations of the Operational Programmes that are part of the III CSF, using the most relevant evaluation elements conveyed by different evaluation studies.