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By using evaluations for the socio-economic and development programs, the European Union (EU) played a decisive role for the introduction of evaluation as a management tool in Romania, as well as in the other Member States. A proper management of the implementation of the EU programs has been a constant concern of the Romanian administration. Since its accession to the EU on January 1, 2007, Romania became responsible for administrating the evaluation of EU funded programs, under the Extended Decentralization Implementation System (EDIS). The paper is trying to examine how the experience gained throughout the independent evaluations of the pre-accession funds generated knowledge for learning and could further contribute to the development of the public policies evaluation practice in Romania. The hypothesis is that experience generated by independent evaluation use of pre-accession EU funds will contribute to further expansion of the evaluation practice to the national public policies. The methodology employed in this paper relies on empirical research of all relevant documents related to the both interim evaluations: Phare and Structural Instruments. The opinion of the key stakeholders on the evaluation practice was also considered, by applying a specific questionnaire regarding the evaluation use, combined with interviews of the key stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]