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Thursday, 28.03.2024, 19:38
ESF reveals good results for the last seven years
Supporting national priorities
According
to the evaluation, during 2007-14, the European Social Fund has provided
essential support to implementing national and EU priorities for smart,
sustainable and inclusive growth, including the Europe 2020 targets and
country-specific recommendations in the framework of the European Semester.
Vice-President
for the Euro and Social Dialogue, Valdis Dombrovskis showed that,
according to the report, the ESF within 7 years helped millions of
Europeans find jobs, acquire extra skills and qualifications. The European
Social Fund had an essential role in the functioning of labour markets in all
EU states, it helped modernise employment services, supported education systems
and general public administration, and supported the most disadvantaged in
society.
He added
that the states have to build on this experience to invest in human capital -
workers, young people and all those looking for a job.
Commissioner
for Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility, Marianne Thyssen commented that the EU Social
Fund makes a real difference in the lives of Europeans as a main EU instrument
to invest in human capital. Thanks to European support, millions of people have
found a job, improved their skills or found their way out of poverty and social
exclusion. She added that the ESF is a clear example of “solidarity at its
best”.
Effect for the Baltic States
Participants
in ESF-actions were almost evenly spread between the inactive (36%), the
employed (33%) and the unemployed (30%). Key target groups included the
low-skilled (40%), young people (30%) and the disadvantaged (at least 21%).
Women made up 51.2 million of the participants.
Several EU
states benefited from significant additional financial resources under the ESF in
addressing employment and social challenges and setting-up policies that
otherwise would have had difficulty to find financial support.
ESF
provided, for instance, more than 70% of
resources for active labour market policies in Bulgaria, Estonia, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania,
Malta, Romania and Slovakia and more than 5% of expenditure on education and
training in Portugal and Czech Republic.
There have
been 39 projects implemented in Latvia
during 7 years’ period (compared to 31 in Lithuania and 24 in Estonia).
The ESF has
played an essential role in supporting the modernisation of public employment
services and other institutions responsible for active labour market actions.
In less developed regions, the ESF has supported reforms in the education,
judiciary and general public administration. This way, it gave a positive
impetus to the business environment and creating more inclusive societies. The
ESF also has sparked fresh ways of supporting local and regional innovations.
The ESF has
also had a positive impact on GDP of EU-28 (0.25% increase) and productivity,
according to macroeconomic simulations.
The report
finally highlighted the ESF’s role in mitigating the negative effects of the
crisis: thanks to its flexibility, it could swiftly respond to emerging
challenges, by refocussing actions on those most affected by the crisis.
ESF operations during 2007-15
In this programming
period, the ESF was operational in all 28 EU states, through 117 Operational Programmes (OPs).
These
programmes responded to different ESF objectives:
- 59 under the regional competitiveness and
employment objective,
- 42 under the convergence objective, and
- 16 multi-objective programmes.
In line
with the principle of shared management, the Commission and EU states developed
together the priorities and objectives of the Programmes; then the states
selected and developed the concrete projects under the Programme, in a way that
best suited to serve their needs.
The total
allocation for ESF during seven years was
€115.6 billion, of which €76.8
billion came from the EU budget, €35.1
billion from national public contributions and €3.7 billion from private funds. Operations were carried out
between January 2007 and December 2015.
Evaluation
A number of
key changes were introduced as compared with the previous programming period,
in particular closer links to EU employment policies and objectives and
relevant country‑specific recommendations and greater flexibility to decide how
to achieve common objectives.
To ensure
independence, the evaluation was held by external evaluation experts. It was
composed of a preparatory study, five thematic studies covering the whole range
of ESF interventions and a synthesis report. It also benefited from the results
of an open public consultation.
More information on ESF
- Memo:
Questions and Answers: European Social Fund 2007-2013 evaluation;
- Staff
Working Document: European Social Fund 2007-2013 evaluation;
- Thematic
evaluation reports, synthesis and country reports;
- More
information on projects in your Member State.
Source: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-3984_en.htm