Territorial aspects of the European Social Fund

Summary:

During the 2007-2013 period, the European Social Fund (ESF) will invest approximately €75 billion in the Member States of the European Union and the Member States a further €50 billion of national public funding. Although the ESF support is focused on people and structures, it is also being used to pursue territorial goals through local employment initiatives and social inclusion measures at local and regional level. Member States have chosen different approaches towards setting up their operational programmes (OPs). Some Member States, such as UK, BE, IT, AT and ES have opted for a number of regional programmes, while others such as PL, FR, RO and BG have one programme to cover the whole country. DE and IT implement both variants. In rare cases, e.g. in Denmark, the ESF has been combined with the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and national regional development funding to achieve regional growth and jobs targets.