Evaluation and Evidence Policy Forum: 

In 2025, EES partnered with RAND Europe to identify evidence and evidence gaps for ways of boosting health systems productivity in Europe. See the November 2025 Paper here.

In 2026, partnering with Frontier Economics, our focus is on the transport sector and its efforts to transition to net zero. This is another highly topical issue to consider through our lens of improving the use of evidence to inform policy, and our intention to bring those who generate evidence closer to decision-makers. This is relevant across all sectors – we focus on the transport sector in this series, as an example.

There will be three sessions – the first two are free and online, with a focus on the available evidence: June 9th and 11th 2026; the third will be in person, with a focus on evidence and policymakers at the EES Conference, Lille, France, in late October 2026.

Ongoing Series

The Forum will provide a synthesis of the evidence and issues arising at the end of the series.

Session 1 “Modal Matters in European Transport: Evaluating Freight Shifts on the Road to Net Zero” was held on 9 June 2026

Review the recording below.

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Session 2 ” Modal Matters in European Transport: Evaluating Passenger Shifts on the Road to Net Zero” was held on 11 June 2026.

Review the recording below.

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Session 3 :

Tackling transport decarbonisation in Europe – role of evidence and evaluation in policy-making

Date: Late October 2026 (exact details tbc)

Time: 90 minutes (exact timings tbc)

Venue: EES Conference in Lille, France

 

Invitation to share your evidence 

As we gather more evidence to update the (draft) Briefing Note related to our discussions, we would love to hear from you!              

Do you have existing or emerging evidence which could enrich the conversation (e.g. references to evaluation reports, research, etc)?  If so, we invite you to share them with the EES secretariat (secretariat@europeanevaluation.org).  

 

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Previous EEF Events

Transport transition to net zero: Evidence and policy-making in shifts in the freight and passenger sectors

Session 1 – Modal matters in European Transport: Evaluating freight shifts for a net zero Future

📅9 June 2026

🎤 Speakers:

• Professor Lorant Tavasszy, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
• Dr Elzbieta Glowicka, E.CA, Germany
• Mr Guido Fara, European Court of Auditors

📺 Click here to watch the recording 

 

Session 2 – Modal matters in European Transport: Evaluating passanger on the road to net zero 

📅11 June 2026

🎤 Speakers:

• Professor Greg Marsden, University of Leeds, UK 
• Professor Maria Borjesson, VTI, Sweden 
• Dr Camilo Franco, European Environment Agency 

📺 Click here to watch the recording

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EEF Series:

Series 1:

Theme: Evidence for Policy-Making – Addressing the Health Sector Productivity Challenge in Europe

Partner: RAND Europe

Format: Two online sessions (completed) + one hybrid event (completed)

This pilot series focuses on a critical issue for European public policy: increasing productivity in the health sector, with attention to innovation and workforce systems. Each session is grounded in a policy briefing prepared by RAND Europe, highlighting key challenges and synthesizing available evidence.

📄 Briefing Note December 2025

Evidence for Policy-Making – Addressing the Health Sector Productivity Crisis in Europe

The EES Evidence and Evaluation Forum (EEF), in partnership with RAND Europe, has produced a briefing note capturing the evidence collected during the Forum, alongside reflections on key lessons emerging from the process.

 You can access the briefing note here online.

If you have further thoughts or reflections after reading the briefing note, please contact Tom Ling at tling@randeurope.org. 

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Marking the launch of the Forum

Session 1 – Promoting innovation to strengthen health productivity in Europe

📅 15 July 2025
🎤 Speakers:

• Professor Anita Charlesworth, CBE, co-chair of the Health Foundation’s Commission on NHS productivity and acting chair of North-West London NHS Integrated Care Board and
• Karen Taylor. IPFA, OBE, Director Deloitte Centre for Health Solutions
• 🗣️ Discussant: 
• Riccardo Polastro, Chief Evaluation Officer at World Health Organization WHO

📺 Click here to watch the recording

 

Session 2 – Boosting workforce productivity in Europe

📅 22 July 2025
🎤 Speakers:

• Federico Pratellesi, Policy Analyst in the OECD Health Division
• Reinhard Busse, Dr. med. MPH, Director and Head of the Berlin hub of the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies.
• 🗣️ Discussant:
  Professor Ellen Nolte: Professor of HS and Systems Research

📺 Click here to watch the recording 

 

Session 3 – Increasing health sector productivity in Europe: insights from policymakers: European Commission, WHO and OECD

📅 8 October 2025
🎤 Speakers:

• Mr. Dirk van den Steen Acting Head of Unit at DG SANTE at European Commission
• Dr. Natasha Azzopardi-Muscat, Director of the Division of Country Health Policies and Systems at WHO
• Ms. Francesca Colombo, Head of the Health Division at OECD

📺Click here to watch the recording

What Comes Next

A new EEF series on a different public policy issue is currently in development and will take place in 2026. Stay tuned for updates.

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