Open Letter to the European Council: Protecting ESF and ERDF

Open Letter to the European Council: Protecting ESF and ERDF: building on what works for people and regions

Brussels, Belgium – 19 June 2026

Dear President Costa, dear Presidents, dear Prime Ministers,

We are the ones implementing the EU Budget. We are the ones bringing results locally, ensuring EU funding reaches people through employment, education and training, social inclusion, health, care, and social services programmes across Europe. We are NGOs, social services, public health and service providers, lifelong learning and social economy actors, workers, and social partners. We represent millions of organisations, enterprises, and people. We joined forces under the EUFunds4Social Coalition to ensure that social spending remains a central pillar of the next EU budget.

The European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) have proven to be impactful precisely because they embody the key features of a strong social funding architecture: targeted investment, earmarking to reach excluded groups, promotion of partnership approaches, support for social innovation and risk-taking, and clear European priorities adapted to local needs.

As such, ESF+ and ERDF are essential for quality employment, skills development, social inclusion, territorial cohesion, and the much-needed piloting of social innovation programmes and reforms. As highlighted in the joint statement Building on what works: an EU budget that delivers for people and regions, they are also key contributors to the overall economy and wellbeing of European society, through enhanced social cohesion, labour market participation, and fiscal sustainability.

While the objective of improving coordination and cross-sectoral reforms is understandable, the European Commission’s proposal for National and Regional Partnership Plans (NRPPs) cuts social spending and compromises a proven funding architecture. It weakens dedicated budgets, binding allocations for the most vulnerable, decentralised governance, and the role of local/regional authorities and civil society. Moreover, the proposed output-based performance framework risks favouring the safest and easiest-to-deliver interventions, at the expense of more innovative, person-centred and transformative actions. It may also increase the risk that infrastructure costs reduce the share of funding reaching people and communities directly.

We call on the European Council to:

• Increase the social spending from 14% to 25% of the NRPPs and link it explicitly to the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR);
• Preserve ESF and ERDF as stand-alone funds, with separate regulations and dedicated budgets maintained at least at current real levels, ensuring stable long-term investment;
• Maintain clear mandates, with ESF focused on employment, skills, social inclusion and poverty reduction, and ERDF on territorial cohesion and social infrastructure;
• Protect ESF earmarking and priorities, including social inclusion, child poverty, homelessness, youth employment, and support for social partners and civil society as reflected in the Parliament

• Protect direct funding for social innovation, capacity building and transnational cooperation of civil society, social economy actors, and social partners by ensuring a dedicated and ring-fenced allocation within the EU Facility, preserving the continuity of the current EaSI strand under ESF+. Maintain a clear budget line for these actions, alongside financial instruments and blending operations, to safeguard stable support regardless of changing political priorities.

• Strengthen rights-based implementation, ensuring effective enabling conditions and full alignment with the European Pillar of Social Rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, with robust monitoring;

• Reinforce governance based on partnership and subsidiarity, with stronger roles for regional and local authorities, and full application of the partnership principle across funds;

• Improve accessibility for smaller beneficiaries, through simplified procedures, capacity building, lower co-funding, and stable funding conditions with differentiated EU co-financing rates, with at least 80% for social inclusion actions, and 90% for actions targeting the most deprived and people experiencing homelessness, as well as for asylum and inclusion objectives under the Union support for asylum, migration and integration.

A stronger role for the European Semester is expected in the upcoming EU budget process. At the launch of its Spring Package, the Executive Vice-President for Social Rights and Skills, Quality Jobs and Preparedness, Ms Roxana Mînzatu, stated that “a Union that invests in skills, quality jobs and living standards is a Union that can out-compete, out-innovate and withstand any challenge”.

We must ensure that this statement does not remain rhetorical, but is translated into an ambitious Multiannual Financial Framework that provides the architecture for such investments.

The best way to achieve this is for the European Council to ensure that the EU’s key funding instruments for social and territorial investment are protected and reinforced in the next EU budget.

Yours sincerely,

The EUFunds4Social Coalition

Read the open letter for full list of signatories.