This webinar is reserved to Eurocities members only.
Intro to the topic
After long negotiations, the European Parliament and the member states reached in late January an agreement on the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) for 2021-2027. Now, the ESF managing authorities in all EU member states are busy preparing the ESF+ national (or regional) programmes, which are meant to start implementation in early 2022. At the same time, under the Next Generation EU recovery instrument, additional funding is made available to top up the 2014-2020 programmes of ESF, ERDF and FEAD during 2021-2022, to support covid-19 crisis response and crisis repair measures. The overlap in ESF+ and REACT-EU during 2021-2022 requires intensive work for programming of these additional resources at national and regional level. Therefore, there is a good window of opportunity for cities to get engaged in the programming of ESF+ and feed ideas for new types of actions to the managing authorities.
Questions to discuss
- What (new) opportunities are there in ESF+ 2021-2027 for your city? How can you access them?
- How can your city get involved in shaping the ESF+ programme 2021-2027 in your region/country?
- If you could access funding under ESF+ 2021-2027, how would you use it in your city? Which priorities?
- What can you learn from how other cities used ESF in 2014-2020?
- Which challenges is your city facing in accessing EU funds for employment or social inclusion projects?
Agenda
10.00 – 10.05 Welcome by Eurocities
10.05 – 10.30 Presentation of state of play of ESF+ 2021-2027, by the European Commission
10.30 – 11.10 Discussion and mapping exercise: How are cities involved in the ESF+ programming: Learning from cities with active role in ESF in 2014-2020
11.10 - 11.50 Parallel workshops: Learning from cities’ good practices with ESF projects in 2014-2020
Workshop 1: ‘Hela Familjen’ project to reduce Child Poverty in Malmo
Workshop 2: ‘Housing First’ project to support housing of homeless people in Brno
Workshop 3: ‘Trade Skills Houses’ in Barcelona’s neighbourhoods to support youth employment by combining training with work experience
11.55 – 12.00 Conclusions and next steps
For any further information about this webinar, please contact Eurocities Senior Policy Advisor, Bianca Faragau at bianca.faragau@eurocities.eu.
