Frequently asked questions

What is EU Cohesion Policy?

EU Cohesion Policy contributes to strengthening economic, social and territorial cohesion in the European Union. It aims to correct imbalances between countries and regions. It delivers on the Union's political priorities, especially the green and digital transitions.

EU Cohesion Policy is the main investment policy of the European Union with nearly one third of the total budget of the Union is set aside for it in 2021-2027, corresponding to €392 billion.

What is the scope of Kohesio?

Kohesio contains information about projects supported by EU Cohesion policy for the 2014-2020 programming period.

It covers all projects developed under the national and regional operational programmes that are co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the Cohesion Fund (CF), and the European Social Fund (ESF), including, where relevant, the Youth Employment Initiative.

Kohesio also includes the European Territorial Cooperation Programmes projects (also known as INTERREG).

The EU finances many other projects beyond those found in Kohesio. Learn more about all EU funds and their management mode.

What are the legal basis and the data sources?

The Common Provision Regulation (CPR - Regulation (EU) No 1303/2013 for 2014-2020 and Regulation (EU) 2021/1060 for 2021-2027 period) is the reference legislation for the EU Cohesion policy. Specific communication and transparency provisions require Member States and Managing Authorities to publish the lists of operations and update them every six months (requirement for the 2014-2020 programming period).

These lists of operations are the primary data sources for Kohesio.

Kohesio standardises and aggregates the data from these lists and makes them publicly available.

It is the responsibility of the Member States and Managing Authorities to ensure that the data is produced and updated in accordance with the relevant regulations.

The European Commission cannot accept any liability for the accuracy of content from the list of operations in Kohesio.

For more information, check the Legal Notice and the Privacy Statement.

What are the mandatory fields in the list of operations?

In line with Annex XII of the Regulation (EU) No 1303/2013, the lists of operations must contain the following information for each operation:

• Beneficiary name
• Operation name
• Operation summary
• Operation start and end date
• Total eligible expenditure allocated to the operation
• Union co-financing rate
• Project location information (e.g. postal code, region)
• Name of the category of intervention for the operation

How often do you update the data?

According to the specific legal provisions, Managing Authorities are requested to publish an updated version of their lists of operations at least every six months for the 2014-2020 programming period, and at least every four months for the 2021-2027 programming period.

We strive to provide the most updated available information on Kohesio. However processing a large amount of data from multiple sources inevitably entails a delay after their publication by the Managing authorities. The most recent data sources remain the original lists shared on the programme websites and/or national web portals.

How do you translate projects and descriptions? Are you going to provide additional languages?

Kohesio is available in the 24 EU official languages

We use eTranslation, the machine translation tool designed by the European Commission, to translate automatically into English the operation / project titles and descriptions in Kohesio.

While we strive to offer the best accuracy, translations of certain projects may be imprecise. You are encouraged to report these cases and join us in improving the overall quality of the Kohesio knowledge base by sending details to the Kohesio Team.

How do you enrich the data?

Geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude) are computed from the address or postal code thanks to Nominatim (geocoding).

Beneficiaries are linked to their Wikidata equivalents (whenever they exist) based on a machine learning algorithm. Accuracy is above 90% but linking errors remain possible. We encourage you to report them to us.

Can I download the datasets?

Yes! There are three ways to do this:

1. If a specific search has less than 5,000 results (different filters can help you in doing so), a download button appears at the top left of the results. It is possible to download search results in .csv or .xlsx format.
2. It is also possible to access the complete exports of projects and beneficiaries by country by clicking on this link.
3. Data can also be downloaded using the EU Knowledge Graph query service.

For more information on reuse, policy, and copyright, check the Legal Notice and the Privacy Statement.

Can I embed maps and re-publish lists of projects?

You are invited to contact the Kohesio Team to learn about methods to embed our maps and filtered lists on your own website.

Where can I find additional information and complementary data about Cohesion Policy?

You can find comprehensive and up-to-date information on Cohesion Policy on InfoRegio, the EU Regional Policy website.

Additionally, Cohesion Data provides datasets at programme level. It is an open data platform providing data on financing and achievements of EU funds under shared management for both programming periods 2014-2020 and 2021-2027. The platform visualises the latest data available at the level of Countries, Funds, Themes and Programmes.

Caveats and limitations to consider when analysing Kohesio data

Kohesio collects and standardizes – to the extent possible – hundreds of different publicly available lists of operations published on the web by the Managing Authorities. Such data are not reported to the Commission. Their formats, data structures, and the granularity of the information they contain vary significantly across such documents.

Taking into consideration the innovative collection methods and the nature of the data (i.e. lists of operations for communication and transparency), it is important to consider a number of caveats and limitations when using Kohesio data:

• Not all projects in Kohesio can be geo-localized. In addition, project geo-coordinates are computed from the location information provided in the list of operations using open source tools (i.e. Nominatim). While the accuracy of such tools is high, errors remain possible.
• The reported location of a project may not always correspond to the place where the investment was implemented. At times, the location of a project reflects the location of the beneficiary, not necessarily where the investment took place. In specific cases, this can introduce a bias in favor of urban areas as the address of the beneficiary tend to be located in urban areas.
• When funds are channeled via financial instruments and support schemes, Kohesio contains information on the location of the fund manager (e.g. financial intermediary), not the location of the final beneficiaries.
• For certain programmes, Kohesio contains information on the EU contributions at project level. However, details about the EU contributions for each of the selected projects is not a mandatory information in the list of operations. For this reason, it is not always available in Kohesio.
• For 2014-2020 programming period, information on thematic objective of a project is not a mandatory data field to be included in the list of operations. Kohesio infers the thematic objectives based on the intervention fields
• For both 2014-2020 and 2021-2027 programming, including the beneficiaries’ unique identification numbers (e.g. VAT) in the list of operations is not compulsory. The Kohesio team consolidates obvious duplicates in the lists of beneficiaries. However, duplicated beneficiaries can still be found. We encourage users to report this to Kohesio Team