Introduction
At the eve of a new financing round of the Structural Funds, it was essential to reflect on the planning process for the future European Social Fund (ESF) programmes, notably on the basis of the lessons learned from the EQUAL Community Initiative. The seminar on "sound programming of the new European Social Fund programmes" brought together politicians and managers to clarify the programming process, to learn about specific methods and tools for sound planning and to share experience from across the whole of Europe.
This report was drafted as a result of an ESF seminar which was held in Vilnius on 17-18 November 2005. It aims at providing more than a factual account of the seminar. Therefore, it is written as a sourcebook, drawing upon many sources of good practice, from inside but also outside the EU. It is hoped that this can be a "living document" that can continually be updated with new tools and experiences. It is in full accordance with other Commission guidance but it is less focussed on what should be present in programming documents and more on how programmers can draw up quality programming documents.
The seminar was organised by the EQUAL unit together with the EQUAL Managing Authorities from Lithuania, Italy, Poland and French speaking Belgium. It proved to be of great interest to the Member States, attracting almost 200 delegates from all over the EU as well as Bulgaria and Romania.
The seminar was also a kick-off for a series of follow-up seminars organised by the Commission's EQUAL unit together with the ESF co-ordination unit in December 2005 on innovation and transnational cooperation and in January 2006 on partnership and gender mainstreaming. Therefore the Vilnius seminar did not specifically address those issues (for which separate guidance notes are available1) but focussed on generic planning of ESF programmes.
This report was drafted as a result of an ESF seminar which was held in Vilnius on 17-18 November 2005. It aims at providing more than a factual account of the seminar. Therefore, it is written as a sourcebook, drawing upon many sources of good practice, from inside but also outside the EU. It is hoped that this can be a "living document" that can continually be updated with new tools and experiences. It is in full accordance with other Commission guidance but it is less focussed on what should be present in programming documents and more on how programmers can draw up quality programming documents.
The seminar was organised by the EQUAL unit together with the EQUAL Managing Authorities from Lithuania, Italy, Poland and French speaking Belgium. It proved to be of great interest to the Member States, attracting almost 200 delegates from all over the EU as well as Bulgaria and Romania.
The seminar was also a kick-off for a series of follow-up seminars organised by the Commission's EQUAL unit together with the ESF co-ordination unit in December 2005 on innovation and transnational cooperation and in January 2006 on partnership and gender mainstreaming. Therefore the Vilnius seminar did not specifically address those issues (for which separate guidance notes are available1) but focussed on generic planning of ESF programmes.
The seminar provided an opportunity to exchange experience and plans regarding key success factors for planning the new programmes:
- a strategic approach oriented towards the objectives of the new "Integrated guidelines on jobs and growth",
- a wide partnership in support of reforms and a shared ownership of the objectives of the European strategy for growth and jobs, and finally the capability to facilitate and enable learning and the delivery of reforms.
During interactive workshops, the seminar participants identified key challenges that confront them when planning the next generation of ESF programmes. They also identified useful approaches, including from EQUAL, to tackle those challenges. Finally, they formulated a number of priorities to be addressed by themselves as well as the Commission. The importance of mainstreaming EQUAL principles and the support for institutional capacity in Convergence Regions and Cohesion Member States was also underlined.
In addition, the EQUAL Managing Authorities of Lithuania, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Hungary, United Kingdom, French speaking Belgium and Sweden had organised an information market to showcase and explain their experiences concerning effective planning of projects and programmes, by applying a jointly developed toolkit for planning, monitoring and evaluation of innovative and transnational projects. The evaluation of the application of this toolkit2 by more than 400 Development Partnerships concludes that this method has been very useful as it enabled better quality project management. It also allowed decreasing design problems considerably and ensured high participation levels and less disagreement among partners. Therefore, it could be regarded as a widely applicable planning method.
The source book is structured around the four main issues identified in the workshop discussions, being:
The source book is structured around the four main issues identified in the workshop discussions, being:
- strategic orientation and coherence,
- stakeholder engagement,
- delivery planning,
- monitoring and evaluation.
Addressing these issues is essential for ensuring good governance of ESF programmes. Various useful references are also listed. The sourcebook draws heavily on the work of the UK Prime Ministers' Strategy Unit whose deputy-director was a speaker at the conference.
1 http://ec.europa.eu/employment_social/equal/news/200606-reflection-notes_en.cfm
2 The EQUAL Partnership Development Toolkit - a practical guide to participative planning, monitoring and evaluation for facilitators of EQUAL Development and Transnational Partnerships, European Commission, Directorate General for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, Sept. 2005.
1 http://ec.europa.eu/employment_social/equal/news/200606-reflection-notes_en.cfm
2 The EQUAL Partnership Development Toolkit - a practical guide to participative planning, monitoring and evaluation for facilitators of EQUAL Development and Transnational Partnerships, European Commission, Directorate General for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, Sept. 2005.