Press

Social Agenda n°37 – The new European Social Fund

The new European Social fund (ESF), covering 2014 – 2020, includes three key social levers. The first lever is a political one. For the first time in ESF history “promoting social inclusion and combating poverty (and any discrimination) in particular through active inclusion” is one of the four thematic objectives. To ensure that spending reflects this priority, the EU has set a minimum threshold; at least 20% of the 71 billion allocated to the fund has to be used for combatting poverty and promoting social inclusion. This is a milestone in the history of EU funds.

The second social lever is a contractual one. The ESF sets up social pre-conditions that have to be in place before disbursing funding. Any application for funding has to demonstrate that it will promote social inclusion and combat poverty, anti-discrimination, ensure gender equality fully, and implement the United Nations Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. Member states should identify from the beginning in a concrete and not too broad way, how and for what they want to use the money. This was often missing under the previous ESF.

The third social lever is democratic, the so called “partnership principle”. It is now mandatory for member states to organise partnerships with relevant actors, including civil society organisations (CSOs). The involvement of the social partners and CSOs at the appropriate territorial level in the programming and implementation of the ESF is of capital importance for achieving good governance as well as to ensure the effective and efficient implementation of the funds. To date the involvement of civil society and other stakeholders in the implementation of the funds has been very haphazard with very few member states applying the partnership principle properly. Stakeholders were often just informed about decisions that were already taken by public authorities.

To ensure CSOs are properly included they should be involved in the preparation of partnership agreements and progress reports throughout the preparation and implementation of programmes, as well as in monitoring committees. This allows making an added value of: CSOs sound knowledge of the reality on the ground; the needs of different target groups; how to successfully run integrated projects funded by Structural Funds; and the key role played by Structural Funds in delivering on the Europe 2020 poverty reduction and employment targets. This cooperation ensures that those who are socially excluded, and the organisations working with them, have a say in the implementation of the ESF.

Politically these are major achievements at the EU level and they can certainly be a springboard for better support in combatting poverty. However make no mistake, the ESF on its own cannot reverse the dramatic increase in poverty and unemployment that we currently witness, and never was it meant to. At the moment, this responsibility lies within member states. It is nonetheless worthy to mention that other EU funds, including the ERDF, EaSI and Horizon 2020 have also to support social policies as “promoting social inclusion and combating poverty” is one of the overarching priorities for all EU funds as enshrined in the general regulation on the common provisions on structural funds.

The ESF on its own is not the solution to our social crisis in Europe but it can be a part of the solution. It has in its design good political, contractual and democratic principles to ensure positive social leverage in the EU and can support member states in alleviating poverty and ensuring social inclusion. Now, let’s implement it.

Pierre Baussand – Director of Social Platform