Seventy-two percent of European Social Network (ESN) members consider access to EU funding programmes crucial for developing and improving their services for people in need, according to a recent ESN members survey. The future of these EU funding programmes depends on the next EU Multi-Annual Framework (MFF), which will start in 2028. As the European Commission prepares the EU long-term budget in a time of economic uncertainty, with many competing public investment needs, it is vital to maintain EU financial support for social services. With this in mind, ESN has prepared a position paper with our key messages for the future EU budget.
Investing in the crisis preparedness of social services
With an uncertain international environment and the increasing impact of climate change, the next EU budget should invest in social services’ crisis preparedness and resilience. This should include funding for capacity-building in frontline public social services to better address emergency situations related to public health crises, conflict, natural catastrophes, and extreme weather events. Such investment is essential, as evidenced by the 2024 floods in Spain, during which local social services had a central crisis management role, especially in protecting the most vulnerable groups in the population. While there is increasing political momentum for investments in defence and economic competitiveness, such increased investments should not happen at the expense of EU social funds and programmes. This has also been raised in the European Parliament's recent Report on the Future EU Budget, which highlighted the importance of the social dimension of the European Union and of promoting the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR). Social services are part of the European social model and have a stabilising effect on society - especially in times of crisis. ESN calls, therefore, for investment in social services and their workforce to be maintained as they contribute to our societies’ competitiveness and resilience. It is also key to addressing long-term challenges such as ageing populations and social disparities. To increase the resilience of social services, future EU funds should specifically invest in the modernisation and transformation of social services, particularly through digitalisation.
EU funds driving social service development
EU funds and programmes like ESF+, INTERREG, ERDF, CERV, ERASMUS+, EaSI, FEAD, and HORIZON EUROPE are critical resources for developing and improving social services. The programmes behind these acronyms help our members promote and test innovative social services solutions, engage in international knowledge exchange, build new capacities, and learn from best practice exchange. For example, ESN members are dedicated to the transition to a community-based social care model. The future MFF should promote the transformation of the social care sector through programmes that are person-centred, and this can only happen in the community. This month, ESN cosigned a position paper with the European Expert Group on the transition from institutional to community-based support (EEG), which will be presented in an EEG webinar on 18 June. For ESN, the European Social Fund (ESF) is a central element of EU social policy, with a history that dates back to the Treaty of Rome. In this vein, ESN refers to the European Parliament resolution of March 2025 on the ESF+ post-2027 calls for a strong, reinforced and separate ESF+ in the 2028-2034 programming period, with a significant and substantiated increase in the ESF+ budget.
Involving social services for better funding impact
Our members have expressed that future EU funding programmes need to be co-developed with social services departments in public authorities at the national, regional, and local levels to ensure they are properly targeted. Their allocation and programming should be based on principles like subsidiarity, shared management, and decentralisation, including participation in decision-making. In this context, ESN welcomes the European Parliament's future MFF report, which calls for a structure that guarantees regional and local actors are included in the decision-making process for programming and allocating EU funds. In this context, MEPs opposed reported European Commission plans of distributing future funds mainly through single national reform plans decided by central governments.
To help advance the co-development of the future EU budget and represent local, regional, and national social services voices in the debate, ESN has submitted a position paper to the European Commission Consultation on the future MFF. While the deadline for this specific consultation is now over, EU citizens can still participate in the European Commission's larger MFF consultation on the Citizen's Engagement Platform. As we expect the next phase of discussions to start in July 2025, when the Commission will publish its future MFF proposal, we recommend that colleagues engage as soon as possible.
