The European Commission appears to have abandoned its approach for a specific programme for each member state in the next European Social Fund Plus (ESF+), which had disappeared from the provisional version of the regulation examined by EUROPE on Wednesday 16 May. The Commission is making the link between the ESF and the European Semester budget process more flexible, compared to the previous version.
Although the Commission until recently was planning on introducing a country specific programme for the next ESF, as a means to simplify management and reduce bureaucracy (see EUROPE 12016), the Commission appears to have done an about-turn and has removed any mention of a national programme in a version of the EFS+ dated 8 May. The text, however, is not calling for all the different levels of governance to be taken into account either.
Nonetheless, this development may possibly be appreciated by the regions, which are concerned, as explained the President of the Committee of the Regions (CoR), Karl-Heinz Lambertz, who, during an exchange with journalists upstream of the CoR plenary session in May, expressed his concerns about the wishes displayed for centralising and nationalising management of certain European funds.
That said, the territorial dimension appears to be rather lacking in the text, even though article 175 in the TFEU on territorial cohesion is an integral part of the text's legal basis. Therefore, any mention of territorial and social cohesion is absent from the general objectives described in article 3 of the said regulation, which, on the other hand, explicitly refers to the 20 principles in the European pillar of social rights (see EUROPE 11906, 11907). It should be recalled that a mention of territorial cohesion is explicitly made in article 2 of the current regulation (regulation 1304/2013).
According to several different analyses, this tendency appears to indicate the Commission's wish to gradually separate the European Social Fund from Cohesion Policy, which explains the opposition of the local and regional authorities, in addition to certain MEPs.
European Semester
The European Commission has decided to introduce greater flexibility in the link between the Fund and the European Semester. In a previous version of the text, the Commission suggested that 65% (the proposal was in brackets and is therefore subject to arbitration) of funding from the ESF should be invested in agreement with the country specific recommendations. In the new version, the Commission indicates that instead and in place of article 7 on thematic concentration, an “appropriate amount” should be allocated on the basis of the country specific recommendations.
The text introduces several restrictions on the allocation of funding: 25% must be geared towards the promotion of social inclusion and the fight against poverty and at least 10% of any action must involve the fight against youth unemployment. On this latter point, the Commission is taking into account rates of young people aged between 15 and 29 as an indicator and who are not in education, employment or training (NEETs). No rates, however, have been indicated with regard the fight against material deprivation.
Migrants
One interesting point involves the fact that the Commission also intends to cover challenges relating to the migration crisis and added the integration of third country nationals mission to the scope of the regulation. This mention was not included in the previous provisional version, as indicated by one source, who is pleased with this development.
The European Social Fund “Plus” is due to be presented on 30 May. The forecasted budget is €101 billion in current prices. The fund will include the Youth Employment Initiative, the Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived, the EU Programme for Employment and Social Innovation and, finally, the "health" programme (see EUROPE 12013). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)