From Activities to Defensible Impact Claims: Evidence Governance in a Jean Monnet Module

Abstract

This article asks how the Jean Monnet Module “Roadmap for Integrating EU Policies and Strategies on Economic, Social, and Territorial Synergy in Polish Higher Education through Digital European Studies” (ROAD2EU) (Grant Agreement No. 101235886 – ROAD2EU – ERASMUS-JMO-2025-HEI-TCH-RSCH) can make proportionate and auditable claims about economic, social, and territorial synergy without converting attendance, publication, platform use, or automated metrics into self-validating evidence of impact. A purposive documentary review and design-oriented synthesis examined the ROAD2EU project architecture, the 2025 Erasmus+ Jean Monnet framework, EU evaluation and data-governance instruments, and selected scholarship and authoritative guidance on research impact, performance information, indicators, digital dashboards, and human–AI accountability. Four integrated, project-specific instruments are proposed: a six-rung Results-and-Claims Ladder; a Claim–Evidence–Owner Matrix; a Synergy Additionality Test; and a Digital Evidence Governance Protocol. Together they require every public claim to identify its unit, time horizon, evidence bundle, accountable owner, review route, and invalidating conditions. Synergy is treated as demonstrable additional value created through interaction among economic, social, and territorial dimensions, subject to distributional, rights-based, and place-sensitive checks. The article shows what ROAD2EU can report immediately as verified activities and research products, what requires assessed learner or partner evidence, and what cannot be described as territorial impact without longitudinal contribution analysis. It also sets safeguards for AI-assisted coding, translation, summarisation, and dashboarding. The framework is a prospective governance instrument for piloting and empirical evaluation; it has not yet been validated in use, is not an ex-post evaluation, and does not claim that the project has already produced regional impact.