The European Parliament,

–  having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, and in particular Articles 46(d), 149, 153(2)(a), 164, 175 and 349 thereof,

–  having regard to Regulation (EU) 2021/1057 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 June 2021 establishing the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+)(1),

–  having regard to the Regulation (EU) 2024/3236 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 December 2024 amending Regulations (EU) 2021/1057 and (EU) 2021/1058 as regards Regional Emergency Support to Reconstruction (RESTORE)(2),

–  having regard to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), which entered into force on 21 January 2011 in accordance with Council Decision 2010/48/EC of 26 November 2009 concerning the conclusion, by the European Community, of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities(3),

–  having regard to the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR) proclaimed and signed by the Council, Parliament and the Commission on 17 November 2017,

–  having regard to the La Hulpe Declaration on the Future of the European Pillar of Social Rights signed by Parliament, the Commission, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Council on 16 April 2024,

–  having regard to the Liège Declaration of 5 March 2024 entitled ‘Affordable, decent and sustainable housing for all’,

–  having regard to the Commission communication of 27 March 2024 on the 9th Cohesion Report (COM(2024)0149),

–  having regard to the Communication Commission of 20 March 2024 entitled ‘Labour and skills shortages in the EU: an action plan’,

–  having regard to the Council recommendation of 12 March 2021 on Roma equality, inclusion and participation(4),

–  having regard to the Commission communication of 4 March 2021 entitled ‘The European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan’ (COM(2021)0102) and its proposed 2030 headline targets on employment, training and reducing poverty,

–  having regard to the Commission communication of 7 October 2020 entitled ‘A Union of Equality: EU Roma strategic framework for equality, inclusion and participation’ (COM(2020)0620),

–  having regard to the annual reports of the European Court of Auditors on the performance of the EU budget for 2019 and 2021,

–  having regard to its resolution of 23 November 2023 on job creation – the just transition and impact investments(5),

–  having regard to its resolution of 21 November 2023 entitled ‘Children first – strengthening the Child guarantee, two years on from its adoption’(6),

–  having regard to its resolution of 13 December 2022 entitled ‘Towards equal rights for persons with disabilities’(7),

–  having regard to its resolution of 29 April 2021 on the European Child Guarantee(8),

–  having regard to its resolution of 10 February 2021 on reducing inequalities with a special focus on in-work poverty(9),

–  having regard to its resolution of 21 January 2021 on access to decent and affordable housing for all(10),

–  having regard to its resolution of 21 January 2021 on the EU Strategy for Gender Equality(11),

–  having regard to its resolution of 24 November 2020 on tackling homelessness rates in the EU(12),

–  having regard to its resolution of 8 October 2020 on the Youth Guarantee(13),

–  having regard to its resolution of 5 July 2022 entitled ‘Towards a common European action on care’(14),

–  having regard to its resolution of 18 June 2020 on the European Disability Strategy post-2020(15),

–  having regard to the report by Mario Draghi of 9 September 2024 on the future of European competitiveness,

–  having regard to the report by Enrico Letta of 10 April 2024 entitled ‘Much more than a market’,

–  having regard to Rule 55 of its Rules of Procedure,

–  having regard to the opinion of the Committee on Regional Development,

–  having regard to the report of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs (A10-0014/2025),

A.  whereas the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) supports, complements and adds value to the policies of the Member States in order to ensure equal opportunities, equal access to the labour market, fair and high-quality working conditions, social protection and inclusion, in particular focussing on quality and inclusive education and training, lifelong learning, investment in children and young people and access to basic services;

B.  whereas the ESF+ is the only EU fund primarily focused on social policies, and is therefore unique in itself and is strongly effective and necessary in achieving social inclusion, together with the cohesion policy; whereas the ESF+ must be used in the most efficient way in order to achieve systemic changes via structural reforms, focussing on its complementarity with Member States’ budgets in order to motivate the Member States to use the fund for these reforms, notwithstanding that it is crucial also to develop more holistic social policies at EU level to tackle inequalities and exclusion;

C.  whereas cohesion policy, the European Structural and Investment Funds and, in particular, the ESF+, are strong tools for cohesion between Member States, regions and areas, including urban and rural areas;

D.  whereas the situation and needs of each region in the EU are different; whereas local communities are the direct beneficiaries of the ESF+, and it is a precondition that regional and local stakeholders are directly involved in shaping this instrument; whereas community-led local development is a tool for involving citizens at local level in developing responses to the social, environmental and economic challenges faced today and thus it is an important tool to facilitate the implementation of the ESF+; whereas the implementation of the ESF+ at national level is often accompanied by unnecessary administrative burdens and complicated or ineffective rules;

E.  whereas different people in vulnerable situations have different needs, such as children, single parent and large families, women in poverty, unemployed people and those in precarious jobs, migrants, labour migrants and victims of human trafficking, persons with disabilities, young and elderly people, homeless people and Roma people; whereas the digital and green transition is much needed and brings many opportunities but also challenges for everyone, such as the digital skills gap and the digital gender divide, and the need to reskill the workforce, and whereas to succeed in this endeavour, the EU must ensure a just transition that does not leave anyone behind; whereas there are people in vulnerable situations in the EU who are left on the margins of social policies and ESF+ funded programmes; whereas extraordinary efforts and structural changes are needed to reach all people in vulnerable situations and to prevent the number of people in these situations from increasing;

F.  whereas around 100 million people in the EU have some form of disability; whereas only half of persons with disabilities are employed; whereas 28,8 % of persons with disabilities are at risk of poverty or social exclusion(16); whereas persons with disabilities living in the EU continue to face multiple and intersectional forms of discrimination in all areas of their life, including the denial of decent accommodation; whereas persons with disabilities are entitled to enjoy their fundamental rights on an equal basis and are entitled to full and effective participation in all areas of life and society;

G.  whereas 22,3 % of women live in poverty, compared to 20,3 % of men, and whereas women continue to be more affected by poverty and the risk of social exclusion than men(17); whereas women in the EU earn 12,7 % less than men on average and this gender pay gap has over decades resulted in a 29,5 % gender pension gap, creating an unequal level of economic independence between elderly women and men; whereas almost half of single mothers live in poverty or are at risk of poverty or social exclusion;

H.  whereas in 2023, 94,6 million people in the EU, some 21,4 % of the population, were living in households at risk of poverty or social exclusion, with an at-risk-of-poverty or social exclusion rate of 24,8 % for the EU-27(18); whereas in 2020, approximately 14 % of households with children (7,8 million households) consisted of single parents; whereas almost half (48 %) of single mothers and a third (32 %) of single fathers are at risk of poverty or social exclusion(19); whereas almost one in four children in the EU as a whole is therefore at risk of poverty or social exclusion; whereas the youth unemployment rate in the EU is nearly 15 %; whereas being unemployed, in particular at a young age, can lead to financial problems, as well as social isolation, mental health issues and less happiness;

I.  whereas Europe’s overall increase in life expectancy and demographic ageing is generating a growing demand for care across all age groups; whereas 80 % of long-term care is provided by informal carers, predominantly women; whereas the care sector faces a growing shortage of workers in all Member States; whereas the European care strategy aims to ensure quality, affordable and accessible care services with better working conditions and work-life balance for carers across the EU; whereas programmes, projects and actions that promote active ageing and intergenerational ties are supported through the ESF+; whereas the ESF+ is the main EU funding instrument to support the Member States in the implementation of the EU-wide rules on the work-life balance for parents and carers;

J.  whereas the availability and affordability of decent housing is decreasing; whereas housing is primarily a competence of the Member States, in line with the principle of subsidiarity; whereas the reasons behind the current housing situation may differ from one Member State to another, such as over-liberalisation of the market, real-estate speculation, unregulated short-term rentals, the drop in purchasing power of people in poverty and the lack of social and public housing, and is one of the major challenges Europeans are facing today; whereas we are far from reaching the target of ending homelessness by 2030; whereas the EU will have its first ever Commissioner for tackling the housing crises, and the first ever European affordable and sustainable housing plan is expected in 2025; whereas homeless children should be specifically targeted in this plan; whereas such proposals, in line with the principle of subsidiarity, need to go hand in hand with national measures in order to improve access to sustainable and affordable housing and the quality of everyday life, such as measures concerning short-stay rentals or other market interventions in highly stressed areas;

K.  whereas one child in four is still at risk of poverty and social exclusion in the EU(20), and whereas the current trend will not meet the target of reducing the number of children in poverty by at least 5 million by 2030; whereas the European Child Guarantee aims to prevent and combat child poverty and the social exclusion of children in need, by guaranteeing effective and free access to high-quality early childhood education and care, education, school-based activities, at least one free healthy meal each school day, as well as healthcare, and effective access to healthy nutrition and adequate housing; whereas the Executive Vice-President of the Commission for Social Rights and Skills, Quality Jobs and Preparedness is responsible for strengthening the Child Guarantee; whereas ESF+ resources alone are not sufficient for addressing the challenge of child poverty in the EU and, therefore, in line with the subsidiarity principle, this matter should be addressed urgently by the Member States as a matter of priority and the exchange and coordination of best practices should be enhanced, while being complemented by the ESF+ at EU level;

L.  whereas the social and economic integration of migrants, including labour migrants, refugees and victims of human trafficking, should be improved in order to ensure that they are included in our societies; whereas successful inclusion requires not only equal access to the labour market, but also complete participation in society; whereas special attention should be given to migrants coming from non-EU countries and undocumented migrants; whereas different EU funds, including ESF+ and the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund, play their own role in this regard;

M.  whereas the population of the EU is decreasing; whereas depopulation is taking place in some regions and there is an increasing concentration of the population in certain urban areas; whereas efforts should be made to increase development and cohesion in these areas; whereas demographic changes will lead to a smaller workforce, requiring the upskilling, reskilling and expansion of the workforce;

N.  whereas the report on the future of European competitiveness by Mario Draghi warns of the significant skills gap the EU is facing, with 77 % of EU companies reporting that even newly recruited employees do not have the required skills, and 42 % of Europeans lacking digital basic skills; whereas the report deplores the insufficient number of workers benefiting from training and the lack of progress in this area, with more than 50 million workers requiring training to meet the headline target of adults participating in training every year; whereas vocationally trained professionals and people with practical skills are crucial to European societies; whereas the further building of European competitiveness cannot be achieved without strengthening human capital; whereas timely investments in the reskilling and upskilling of workers that are at risk of losing their jobs or whose skills have become obsolete can among others help prevent them from becoming trapped in poverty;

O.  whereas particular attention, including specific measures targeting the needs on the ground where relevant, should be paid to rural areas, areas affected by industrial transition, the outermost regions and regions that suffer from severe and permanent natural, economic or demographic disadvantages, such as sparsely populated regions, islands, mountainous areas and cross-border regions;

P.  whereas the Commission has proposed minimum targets for 2030 to ensure progress towards Roma equality, inclusion and participation under the 10-year plan to support Roma in the EU; whereas these targets include, among others, reducing the gap in housing deprivation by at least one third, cutting the proportion of Roma children who attend segregated primary schools by at least half in Member States with a significant Roma population, and reducing the poverty gap between Roma and the general population by at least half; whereas the ESF+ will remain the main financial tool for reaching the 2030 Roma targets;

Principles of the ESF+ post-2027

1.  Insists that the ESF+ must continue to be the key and primary instrument for supporting the Member States, regions, local communities and people in strengthening the social dimension of the Union and in pursuing socio-economic development that leaves no one behind;

2.  Stresses that the ESF+ must address, contribute and adapt to tackling social challenges such as the consequences of climate change and digitalisation, while addressing social challenges such as the rising cost of living and wages that do not increase at the same speed, promoting social resilience, reducing inequalities and protecting the most vulnerable people; insists that the ESF+ should drive long-term investment and growth, focusing on social and territorial cohesion, while supporting structural transformation across the EU and enhancing convergence between the Member States;

3.  Insists that the ESF+ must continue to enhance upward social convergence, especially for the most deprived people, and invest in human capital, employment, skills development and social inclusion, while boosting entrepreneurship and social innovation, investing in children, addressing the digital and green transition, demographic challenges and regions impacted by crises, among others Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine;

4.  Insists that the ESF+ must continue to enhance employment opportunities, facilitate fair labour mobility, foster the creation of quality jobs, ensure decent working conditions and improve the employment participation rate, in particular of women, persons with disabilities and other people in vulnerable situations, to enhance social and economic resilience and thus help to adapt to industrial changes, also through training, reskilling and upskilling;

5.  Underlines the need for the ESF+ to be based on a social investment strategy and life-long approach by supporting measures that can provide medium- to long-term solutions for people;

6.  Insists that the objectives of the ESF+ should be to achieve social inclusion, high employment levels with high-quality and sustainable jobs, adequate wages, decent working conditions, including the wellbeing of workers, healthy working environments, fair social welfare systems in the Member States, as well as vocational education and training opportunities, and lifelong learning for all, taking into account specific needs of people in vulnerable situations, in order to develop a skilled, competitive and resilient workforce, ready for the twin transition and the future world of work, and to build fair social protections and inclusive and cohesive societies, with the aims of eradicating poverty, combating inequalities and delivering on the principles and the headline targets set out in the EPSR;

7.  Calls for a strong, reinforced and separate ESF+ with significantly increased public support for instruments in the Member States with the aim of providing for people in vulnerable situations and those most in need in our societies, investing in people and skills, helping to lift people out of poverty and social exclusion, and boosting social investment and social entrepreneurship; insists, therefore, that achieving the ESF+ post-2027 objectives would require an important and substantiated increase in the ESF+ budget in the 2028-2034 ESF+ financial envelope;

8.  Calls on the Commission to provide increased, dedicated and well-allocated funding for attaining the objectives of the ESF+ and those of the EPSR and its action plan and headline targets; expresses concerns, therefore, over attempts to split or merge the existing ESF+ with other funds, since that could create serious risks for the implementation of its objectives and those of the EPSR, its action plan and headline targets; warns that unifying, streamlining, centralising or merging funds may not improve their effectiveness; stresses, in this regard, that any possible remodelling of the fund must preserve the effectiveness and the purpose of the ESF+ by serving the objectives of promoting employment, social inclusion, education, training and skill development, and must be managed as close as possible to the beneficiaries;

9.  Believes that the ESF+ should remain in a shared management governance model and that therefore it needs to be avoided that a different ESF+ governance leads to losing the priority given to social aspects, including employment, education, skills, training and social inclusion projects, a potential loss of focus, and to the funding not reaching the local level, people in vulnerable situations and those most in need, while increasing the risk of the funds being reallocated for other purposes;

10.  Calls on the Commission and the Member States to ensure the participation, provision of information to and consultation of social partners, civil society organisations (CSOs), including not-for-profit social services, social enterprises, education and training providers, and representatives of the target groups in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation stages of the ESF+, to allocate adequate funding for this purpose and to prevent the exclusion of smaller actors; calls on the Commission to respect the partnership principle at EU level, as it is essential to the success of the ESF+ and must be maintained under the next multiannual financial framework (MFF); calls for the CSOs to be involved in the ESF+ Committee, as they are the main implementing partners of the fund;

11.  Highlights the need for the ESF+ governance model to allow, while keeping a high level of transparency, for national, regional and local specificities and challenges to be well-reflected in operational programmes, not least by taking due account of the expertise of national and regional stakeholders, including civil society, and by ensuring that the funding goes to organisations and activities that target people in need;

12.  Highlights that the availability of and universal access to quality public services such as early childhood education and care, education and health, as well as access to adequate, affordable and decent housing and essential services such as affordable energy, sanitation, water and healthy nutrition, are necessary conditions for ensuring equal opportunities and improving employment levels, improving living and working conditions and fighting poverty and social exclusion; underlines the role that the ESF+ can play in this regard; draws particular attention to the situation of older people who, due to rising living costs and the declining purchasing power provided by their pensions, are living in or are at risk of falling into severe poverty, which often leads to them being deprived of basic needs, such as food, housing and access to care facilities, resulting in the loss of social dignity;

13.  Notes that the current ESF+ programme was adopted before the emergence of the crises that have led to high inflation and an increased cost of living, and therefore require higher public and social investment, such that the existing ESF+ cannot meet current needs; calls on the Commission, therefore, to ensure that a comprehensive, stable and large-scale needs-and-rights based budget, which takes into account inflation, the increased cost of living, poverty rates and the need for access to affordable housing, is guaranteed for the ESF+ in the next MFF;

14.  Underlines that the post-2027 ESF+ should invest in tackling enduring social challenges and stay close to the general and specific objectives set out in the current ESF+, while being capable of responding and adapting to changing socio-economic circumstances; emphasises the importance of the fund’s principles of shared management, clear objectives and thematic concentrations, and that most of the fund should be spent as close as possible to those using the fund in close cooperation with local and regional authorities and organisations; highlights the need to share best practices on the most efficient and transparent implementation of the ESF+; highlights the need to continuously assess the impact and effectiveness of ESF initiatives;

15.  Stresses that the post-2027 ESF+ should first and foremost address structural social and economic challenges; expresses its concern that the ESF+ has been repeatedly used as an emergency response tool and underlines that this approach poses a risk for the longer-term policy and investment objectives of cohesion policy and also poses the risk that the people for whom cohesion policy is intended cannot be sufficiently reached;

16.  Calls on the Commission, therefore, to protect the budget allocation of the ESF+ so that it can be used for its main objectives and beneficiaries and to propose a financial reserve instrument that enables the EU to respond rapidly and in a flexible manner to social emergencies and crisis situations, complementing the ESF+ and other cohesion funds, either built on the success of the temporary EU instrument launched in 2020, entitled ‘Support to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency (SURE)’, or be it an EU unemployment reinsurance scheme, or based on the EU Solidarity Fund, designed to be mobilised to repair damage caused by natural disasters or public health emergencies; calls on the Commission, therefore, to ensure its sufficient funding with a view to the increased risks in these areas due to climate change;

Objectives, priorities and budget

17.  Underlines that horizontal principles, such as gender equality, anti-discrimination based on sex, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion or belief, nationality, or racial or ethnic origin(21), and freedom of movement, should be integral to the ESF+; stresses the importance of an intersectional approach throughout the entire development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the fund;

18.  Stresses the importance of the social inclusion of persons with disabilities and insists therefore that the ESF+ supports the employment of persons with disabilities through work and training placements, especially in facilitating transitions from sheltered workshops to the open labour market;

19.  Stresses that more efforts are needed to ensure that persons with disabilities can access quality support and enjoy their rights as described in the UNCRPD; stresses that the upcoming ESF+ should keep prioritising independent living and the transition from institutional care to community-based care, and facilitate home support and personal assistance schemes; calls for the ESF+ to deliver on the European disability rights strategy 2021-2030, and in particular to facilitate the implementation of the upcoming EU Guidance on Independent Living and Inclusion in the Community, the upcoming Framework on Social Services of Excellence for Persons with Disabilities, and the Disability Employment Package;

20.  Insists that the ESF+ should target disadvantaged people in our societies, in particular marginalised people and communities such as children in vulnerable situations and older people, ethnic minorities, Roma people, persons with disabilities or chronic diseases, homeless people, low-income groups, the long-term unemployed, as well as those living in rural areas, islands or remote regions who face unique socio-economic challenges; underlines that the ESF+ must be inclusive, with special attention given to all kinds of families, people and families in depopulated areas where access to services and opportunities can be more limited, and to children deprived of parental care; further stresses that the ESF+ should encourage the adoption of measures that prevent family separation for families in precarious situations, including parenting education programmes, family-focused therapy and employment training;

21.  Stresses that the ESF+ should invest in projects targeting women’s employment and the social and economic inclusion of women, with special attention to single mothers and female-headed households; insists that the ESF+ supports women who are in vulnerable situations and need extra support to (re)integrate in societies and the labour market, including women who are victims of gender-based violence, including economic violence; calls for a cross-cutting gender approach(22) along the ESF+;

22.  Calls on the Commission, in the light of current challenges, to include in the specific objectives of the ESF+ the promotion of the just transition, ending homelessness, the promotion of social enterprises in the social economy and the socio-economic integration of people in vulnerable situations, including migrants, young people, older people and those living in areas impacted by demographic decline and persons with disabilities or chronic diseases, as well as those coming back to the labour market after a longer absence;

23.  Stresses that reaching the EPSR’s targets on poverty becomes challenging, unless specific support is dedicated to developing medium to long-term solutions to lift people out of poverty and to tackle the structural causes of inequalities, making them more resilient to upcoming challenges, addressing current gaps in national social protection systems and therefore reinforcing welfare systems, and mitigating the social impact of crises in a targeted manner; insists on dedicating support to ensure decent living conditions leaving no-one behind, with access to high-quality essential public services; calls for the EU anti-poverty strategy, outlined in Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s political guidelines for the 2024-2029 term to go beyond policy proposals and to allocate better funding in the upcoming MFF dedicated to social justice across funds, and to ease the delivery of the ESF+ on the ground; underlines the role of the ESF+ in implementing the strategy;

24.  Stresses that addressing child poverty requires appropriately funded, comprehensive and integrated measures, together with the efficient implementation of the European Child Guarantee at national level, and insists on the need, in line with the subsidiarity principle, for the Member States to address this matter urgently with robust budgetary resources and stands ready to enhance the coordination and exchange of best practices at EU level while continuing to provide complementary support through the ESF+; insists, furthermore, that all the Member States should allocate at least 5 % of their ESF+ resources to tackling child poverty and those Member States with a rate of children at risk of poverty or social exclusion above the EU average should allocate a higher amount to tackle the problem more effectively; insists on transparent and efficient use of the European Child Guarantee budget as close to the target groups as possible and in cooperation with whole spectrum of stakeholders and local organisations;

25.  Urges the Commission, in line with the two general objectives of the fund and to reflect their importance on an equal footing, to raise the earmarking for social inclusion beyond the current 25 % and the earmarking for food aid and basic material assistance for the most deprived persons to 5 %, in response to rising living and food costs;

26.  Welcomes the Commission president’s announcement the delivery of a European affordable housing plan and the launch of a pan-European investment platform on affordable and sustainable housing; shares the ambition to prioritise the tackling of the housing crisis, in line with the principle of subsidiarity, and emphasises that the post-2027 ESF+ should enhance timely and equal access to affordable, decent, accessible, inclusive, sustainable and high-quality services promoting access to housing, including measures such as social housing and affordable rental schemes; believes that all Member States must invest a sufficient amount of their ESF+ resources into tackling homelessness and asks the Commission to propose a significant earmarking for this;

27.  Emphasises the need to ensure sufficient financing of the ESF+ post-2027 for high-quality, accessible public education and training for all, as well as the social right for workers to participate in skills development, upskilling, reskilling and lifelong learning, and for the addressing of skills shortages and brain drain, ensuring that individuals can successfully navigate labour market transitions without facing any type of discrimination, particularly workers impacted by the digital and green transition, and promoting specific actions for older workers to make the most of senior talent and experience; calls in this context for close cooperation between key actors, including educational institutions, employers, workers, governments and local authorities;

28.  Underlines the potential of the ESF+ in fostering innovation and digital skills, while supporting workers affected by the digital and green transition by aligning educational and training programmes in a targeted way with the evolving needs of key sectors and ensuring access to lifelong learning opportunities, so that workers of all ages can continuously adapt their skills to meet the new employment needs of a rapidly changing economy; stresses the need for more subsidies and development of programmes that support workers in the digital and green transition, including retraining and reskilling of workers;

29.  Insists that measures aiming to improve access to the labour market and promote skills acquisition should be designed in a way that promotes and recognises the autonomy of individuals, anticipates future skills needs and targets employees at risk of future job-loss; recalls in this context the wide range of skills-enhancing initiatives undertaken at the EU level that can provide useful guidance to the development of education and training programmes at the national and regional level;

30.  Calls for the strengthening of efforts to support the implementation of the Youth Guarantee; urges the Commission to propose an increased earmarking beyond the current 12,5 % of their ESF+ resources for all Member States to support the targeted actions and structural reforms to support quality youth employment, vocational education and training, in particular traineeships and apprenticeships, and the transition from school to work, pathways to reintegrate into education or training and second chance education; repeats, in this context, its call on the Member States to ban exploitative practices, including unpaid traineeships; emphasises the need for monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to ensure its long-term impact and effectiveness;

31.  Underlines the importance of the ESF+ in focusing on different groups with different needs; stresses, therefore, the importance of allocating support to, among others, projects on the social inclusion of persons with disabilities, Roma people, the ageing population in society, women and children, and female-headed and large households and families, and the socio-economic integration of migrants, including labour migrants, with special attention to migrant women; emphasises further that the ESF+ should support projects for social and educational objectives and improving skills in regions experiencing significant depopulation; insists that the ESF+ post-2027 incorporates other aspects of social inclusion, such as housing, health and family circumstances and the support of public and community-based services; underlines that there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution and that ways to address those needs may vary from region to region;

32.  Stresses that the Employment and Social Innovation strand of the ESF+ supports initiatives addressing the precarious situation of mobile workers and secures funding for trade union-related counselling, underlining the importance of workers’ representatives in collective bargaining; calls on the Commission and the Member States to provide stable funding for a European network of national and transnational trade union counselling services for such workers in order to enhance fair labour mobility;

33.  Recalls that the ESF+ should also aim to provide a healthy and well-adapted working environment in order to respond to health risks related to changing forms of work, and the needs of the ageing workforce; stresses that the pandemic has accelerated new realities and the rise of new forms of work brought by digitalisation, including artificial intelligence (AI), that have affected workers’ occupational safety and health; calls, in this light, for support and sufficient funding to ensure effective work on the protection of workers against dangerous and harmful substances;

34.  Calls for the ESF+ to boost the effective implementation of the European care strategy in all Member States by investing in quality community-based and home care services and infrastructure, long-term care and support for persons with disabilities and older persons with support needs, and quality early childhood education and care through community-based, child and person-centred, high-quality, affordable and accessible public care systems that promote the autonomy of persons in need of care as well as their dignity and that of carers; calls for further investment in support for carers, formal and informal, while at the same time ensuring decent working conditions for workers in the care sector, including adequate salaries, via a Care Deal; calls on the Member States to make full use of ESF+ funds to reinforce and finalise the deinstitutionalisation process so as to ensure that every person can live in a family or community environment;

35.  Recalls that public expenditure is needed to ensure upward social convergence; stresses that the implementation of the EPSR and the reforms under the relevant country-specific recommendations in the European Semester are also dependant on the strong support of the ESF+ for certain policy measures, especially those related to strengthening social welfare systems, ensuring inclusive, accessible and high-quality public education and training, care systems and healthcare services, including for mental health, reducing child poverty and eradicating homelessness and those relating to equal treatment and opportunities for women and men, which must be guaranteed and strengthened in all areas, including labour market participation, terms and conditions of employment and career advancement;

36.  Recalls that EU policies can deliver the biggest impact when they are coordinated with funding instruments and other strategic frameworks, such as the European Semester and its country-specific recommendations; notes that the effectiveness of interventions funded by the ESF+ depends on the successful implementation of reforms;

37.  Underlines that social dialogue and collective bargaining are pivotal for well-being at work and the reduction of in-work poverty, social exclusion and wage inequality; calls on the Commission to allocate consistent, adequate and sufficient financial resources to capacity-building, with the aim of empowering social partners to play a relevant role in areas of their competence, strengthening their capacity to engage in social dialogue both at EU and national level and of enhancing social partners’ actions with an appropriate minimum obligation in all Member States, and to include technical assistance for these three purposes; further insists that CSOs and non-for-profit organisations should, on an equal basis, be guaranteed minimum access to funding to contribute to and pursue ESF+ objectives in the Member States; underlines at the same time the need to develop institutional capacity through strong and professional administration and to foster innovation in public sector management;

38.  Stresses the importance of employee-owned cooperatives, social enterprises and other alternative business models in reaching EU goals of inclusion; underlines that it is of the utmost importance that small social enterprises, not-for-profit social services and CSOs have access to all aspects of the ESF+; calls for a co-financing rate of at least 90 % for measures targeting the most deprived, and at least 70 % for all other actions implemented by small entities with limited capacity, such as CSOs, not-for-profit social services and social enterprises, in order for them to have access to funding while preserving a minimum number of different co-financing rates;

Functioning of the fund

39.  Calls on the Member States to ensure coordination between regional and local authorities and organisations and their involvement in projects financed from national budgets and insists on the need to maintain the partnership approach of the current ESF+, which is key to strengthening the quality of the programmes financed under the ESF+; reiterates the need to adopt rules to manage the fund in cooperation with local actors that are closest to people’s needs and can develop place-based solutions that best suit their specific territories; highlights the need to involve regional and local actors in the implementation of the fund;

40.  Insists that the rules governing the use and the implementation of the ESF+ must ensure and enhance compliance with the rule of law, the EU acquis, the highest EU social standards, social rights and democratic principles, and be aligned with the EPSR, the UN’s sustainable development goals and fundamental human rights and workers’ rights, as also included in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU;

41.  Calls for rules governing the ESF+ to allow public money to be allocated only to those employers that respect workers’ rights and the applicable rules on working conditions; encourages the Commission to create a comprehensive database, supplementing the Eurostat data, to allow for the timely and reliable monitoring of developments in employment, living conditions and industrial relations;

42.  Notes with concerns that the national governments often hinder efficient implementation of the ESF+ by imposing unnecessary administrative burdens or preventing local actors from managing support under the fund or funding opportunities; calls for the reduction of the administrative burden and bureaucracy, notably by simplifying the application processes for accessing funds and the reporting procedures for organisations, in particular for civil society and social economy organisations, and those of a smaller size; emphasises that beneficiaries, including not-for-profit social service providers, should be consulted for the design of the simplification measures; urges that simplification uphold the fundamental principles of shared management, transparency, accountability and independent scrutiny, as well as the principles of partnership, ensuring the proper administration of public funds;

43.  Recognises that excessive reliance on metrics such as the error rate may lead to a greater administrative burden; notes that different metrics, including measurements of inputs, outputs, performance or qualitative measures, may fit different objectives and interventions;

44.  Calls on the Commission to provide consistent support and communication to the Member States in order to help them set up individual projects effectively and transparently, including transparent and predictable conditions, which provide legal clarity and predictability to applicants, as well as for the final beneficiaries of the funding;

45.  Calls on the Commission to ensure more thorough evaluation of the effectiveness of individual interventions without imposing major new burdens on providers, for instance by simplifying the exchange of information between the Member States and the Commission and by creating evaluation desks at both EU and national levels;

46.  Reiterates that digitalisation is one of the important tools to reduce administrative burden and streamline applications for funding opportunities, and that as such it should be promoted and people’s digital skills strengthened; warns, however, that not all people are prepared for digitalisation and that certain groups of people, especially the most vulnerable, such as older people and those living in depopulated areas where access to services and opportunities can be more limited, and the projects targeting them, as well as CSOs, not-for-profit social services and social enterprises, could miss out on funding opportunities as a result;

47.  Sees that more work needs to be done for organisations and people to know about all the opportunities that the ESF+ can bring; insists that the Commission and the Member States raise awareness, inform and advise organisations about the opportunities presented by the ESF+ by carrying out information campaigns; sees that there is still a significant knowledge and skills gap, especially for social services, in accessing the current ESF+ and running EU-funded projects; considers, in particular, that the future ESF+ regulation should reserve a technical assistance budget to set up a network of national helpdesks or low-threshold information points offering services such as walk-in job counselling, coordinated at cross-European level in order to effectively deliver the training, guidance and support to organisations on the ground;

48.  Calls on the Commission and the Member States to strengthen synergies at all levels between projects supported by the ESF+ and by other EU funds;

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49.  Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the European Economic and Social Committee, and the European Committee of the Regions.

(1) OJ L 231, 30.6.2021, p. 21, ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2021/1057/oj. (2) OJ L, 2024/3236, 23.12.2024, ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/3236/oj. (3) OJ L 23, 27/01/2010, p. 35, ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/dec/2010/48(1)/oj. (4) OJ C 93, 19.3.2021, p. 1. (5) OJ C, C/2024/4224, 24.7.2024, ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/C/2024/4224/oj. (6) OJ C, C/2024/4212, 24.7.2024, ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/C/2024/4212/oj. (7) OJ C 177, 17.5.2023, p. 13. (8) OJ C 506, 15.12.2021, p. 94. (9) OJ C 465, 17.11.2021, p. 62. (10) OJ C 456, 10.11.2021, p. 145. (11) OJ C 456, 10.11.2021, p. 208. (12) OJ C 425, 20.10.2021, p. 2. (13) OJ C 395, 29.9.2021, p. 101. (14) OJ C 47, 7.2.2023, p. 30. (15) OJ C 362, 8.9.2021, p. 8. (16) https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Disability_statistics_-_poverty_and_income_inequalities (17) https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Gender_pay_gap_statistics (18) https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Living_conditions_in_Europe_-_poverty_and_social_exclusion (19) https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/edn-20210601-2 (20) https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/ddn-20240719-1 (21) Article 10 TFEU. (22) Commission communication of 5 March 2020, ‘A Union Of Equality: Gender Equality Strategy 2020-2025’, COM(2020)0152.