How Efficient Is the Cohesion Policy in Supporting Small and Mid-Sized Enterprises in the Transition to a Low-Carbon Economy?

Funds from the European Union that are devoted to fostering a low-carbon economy are aimed at assisting Member States and regions in implementing the required investments in energy efficiency, renewable energy, and smart distribution electricity grids, and for research and innovation in these areas. In this context, we assessed the implementation of these funds in small and medium-sized enterprises across different beneficiary countries and regions of the European Union. Therefore, this study uses a non-radial slack-based data envelopment analysis model coupled with cluster analysis that covers multiple aspects of evaluation, including two inputs and two outputs, to assess 102 programs from 22 countries. Overall, we were able to ascertain that there are 25 efficient operational programs that remain robustly efficient, whereas 51 remain robustly inefficient for data perturbations of 5 and 10%. Under the current output level, there was almost no input surplus. Therefore, to promote a low-carbon economy, operational program managers should concentrate on solving the problems behind the poor results achieved, both in terms of greenhouse gas emissions reduction and the pace of the programs’ implementation.