SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, March 10 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Canary Islands will manage 446.6 million euros in aid from the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) for employment, training and social inclusion in the 2021-27 budget period.
The Vice President of the Canary Islands and Minister of Finance, Budgets and European Affairs, Román Rodríguez and the Director of Labor Conditions and Social Dialogue of the European Commission, María Iglesia, presided over this Friday in Santa Cruz de Tenerife the launch event for this operational programme, if Well, the latter did it electronically from Brussels.
Also participating in the session were Salvador Vargas, advisory member of the Administrative Unit of the European Social Funds of the Ministry of Labor and Social Economy; Georgiana-Iona Mozer-Shönborn, Program Assistant at the Directorate General for Employment of the European Commission; Fermín Delgado, Deputy Minister of Finance, Planning and European Affairs, and Luis Márquez, General Director of Planning and Budget.
Rodríguez highlighted the volume of resources that the European Union has made available to the Canary Islands for the execution of projects related to social cohesion and pointed out that the obligation of the autonomous Government is now to carry out “fast, sensitive and capable” management of the funds for contribute to the development and social transformation of the archipelago.
The vice-president indicated, in any case, that just as important as the amounts of European funds are the priorities and political objectives that are pursued with them, especially in the case of the ESF+, whose projects are called upon to reinforce social justice.
The vice president specified that the Canary Islands will receive some 7,500 million euros until 2027, between ordinary resources included in the community budget and extraordinary funds for recovery, integrated into the Next Generation instrument, includes a note from the Government.
The vice-president thanked the sensitivity of the European Commission for the attention to its specificities, collected not only in article 349 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU but also supported by the European courts of justice, and which have allowed such intensity of resources, to despite the difficulties of the pandemic and the departure of the United Kingdom from the European club.
“Fortunately, this legal umbrella supports the articulation of policies adapted to the singularities of our land and also of the rest of the outermost regions,” said Rodríguez, who also thanked the response offered by the Union to the pandemic, which has allowed a rapid economic recovery and intense, despite the uncertainties that persist, mainly related to inflation.
María Iglesia stressed that the ESF+ is the maximum expression of the social solidarity of the European Union and encouraged all participating institutions and organizations to properly manage the projects so that they have a multiplier effect in society.
In the same way, he stressed that the ESF+ comes at a key moment in the European Union, in a period of transition towards a digital and green economy in which no one is going to be left behind, and insisted on the resources that will be made available provision of the Canary Islands for the fight against poverty or the so-called child guarantee to attend to the needs of the most vulnerable children.
Vargas, for his part, recalled that the ESF is the oldest structural fund in the Union, not in vain it was already part of the Treaty of Rome in 1957, and pointed out that in this new edition it appears “reinforced and super-vitaminized” because it has been added a large social component to its traditional objectives related to employment and training.
“THE RESPONSIBILITY IS OURS”
Fermín Delgado thanked the sensitivity of the European Commission and the central government towards the Canary Islands, not only with the FEDER and ESF+ operational programs, but also with those instruments of agricultural policy and the Interreg MAC cooperation program.
“For the Canary Islands it is a success to have maintained the same amount of funds as in the previous EU budgetary framework and to do so with a co-financing percentage of 85%,” said Delgado, who insisted on the importance of the funds that the Canary Islands receive in its OR status.
In any case, he indicated that the responsibility now belongs to the Canary Islands “to make an adequate and correct management of these funds, it is not worth victimhood or diverting attention from one’s own obligations.”
According to Delgado, “we have to be rigorous so that this money reaches those who need it and, therefore, it is spent well.”
Luis Márquez thanked the technical work of the teams involved in the extensive negotiation period and described the management of this operational program as an “exciting challenge”, which is added to the rest of the ordinary and extraordinary European funds managed by the Budget Department of the Ministry of Finance
A TRULY SOCIAL FUND
The Commission approved on December 19 the Execution Decision of the European Social Fund Plus program, through which the EU will distribute aid of 446.5 million euros for the new budget period 2021-2027, an amount that rises to 525 million if the co-financing of the Canarian and Spanish governments is included.
In the previous period, European aid amounted to 279.6 million euros.
The main difference is that the current contribution includes for the first time an allocation for the condition of the Canary Islands Ultraperipheral Region (RUP), which amounts to 157 million euros.
Regardless of this allocation, the most important item is aimed at social inclusion and the fight against poverty, endowed with 80 million euros, followed by youth employment, with 62.3 million.
The ESF+ is a fund that invests in people and applies the European pillar of social rights, contributing to a more Social Europe; to economic, social and territorial cohesion, with particular emphasis on employment and training.
In this new period, the program merges the previous European Social Fund (ESF) with the Youth Employment Initiative (YEJ) and a part of the Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived (FEAD).
