EESC Corner: The European Economic and Social Committee believes in the ESF

The MFF has proposed to set aside €84 billion for the ESF over the period 2014–2020. In the current context of tight budgets, ensuring effective use of the EESF resources is surely an important item for discussion. The EESC has voiced its new opinion about the future of the European Social Fund, which was adopted by the SOC Section on January 25 and which passed to discussion at the plenary meeting.

There is a very broad consensus about the mission and the scope of the ESF. The ESF should be the preferred instrument for implementing the goals of the Europe 2020 Strategy, particularly with regard to employment, education, social inclusion and combating poverty. It should support the policies pursued be Member States under the Integrated Guidelines and the National Reform Programmes including Country Specific Recommendations. The EESC welcomes a valuable contribution of the ESF to the other priorities of the Europe 2020 as well – research and innovation, accessibility and use of ICT, increasing of the SMEs competitiveness, protecting environment, shift to the low carbon economy and sustainable use of resources. The EESC supports the approach adopted in the regulation, which focuses on four thematic objectives translated into intervention categories or investment priorities and welcomes that funding concentration should ensure a sufficient and demonstrable impact. Efficient and effective implementation of actions supported by the ESF depends on good governance and partnership among all relevant territorial and socio-economic actors. The EESC feels that the partnership principle has a key role to play here, ensuring that the EU Structural Fund measures work properly.

Regulations on Structural Funds must clearly define partnership principle setting out the role of each partner at regional and local level. The current way of consulting the social partners with the Member States within the ESF committee could provide a good example of an approach to be extended to all funds. From the EESC perspective, an important element has to do with the way in which social partners are involved in the development of the Operational Programmes at the national level. This also covers the issue of an access to ESF funds for social partner initiatives at the national level.

Vladimíra Drbalová,
The Confederation of Industry of the Czech Republic, EESC Member