Abstract

Today there is great interest in industrial policy among policy-makers, particularly within the European Union. The new interest in policy models that considers the higher integration of global economies has led the European Union to formulate the Europe 2020 Strategy. The purpose of this strategy is to provide a new framework for economic and particularly industrial policy in Europe. Industrial policy, indeed, became the flagship of the Europe 2020 Strategy, which indicates the overall aim of EU industrial policy to promote European industrial competitiveness, thus placing more emphasis on factors such as the growth of SMEs, the supply and management of raw materials and well-paid jobs. The purpose of this chapter is: (1) to make a survey of the problems involved in policy evaluation in general and specifically in the evaluation of industrial policies with reference to the Europe 2020 strategy, and (2) to sketch the role of policy monitoring and evaluation in an industrial policy life cycle model. This contributes to better understanding of challenges facing policy-makers and researchers to design a holistic policy evaluation framework that is results-oriented.