European funds with a high social impact: the activation of social dialogue as an enabling factor
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To solve the main and age-old problem of our country in making the expenditure of European funds more efficient, but above all in the implementation of projects that effectively respond to the needs of territories and citizens, one of the key elements is a real involvement of the economic partnership and social, beyond the formal and ritual fulfilments to which participation in the Supervisory Committee has often been reduced up to now. It is there for all to see that economic, social, material and immaterial infrastructure inequalities have increased over time instead of decreasing, despite the many resources made available in past years by the cohesion policies promoted by the European Commission through the Structural Funds of investment. Our South, together with the inland areas, some coastal areas and the suburbs of large cities throughout our country, remain among the areas of Europe with the most backwardness factors. Also due to the choice made by the various governments that have followed one another not to use the resources of the Structural Funds for cohesion in an additional way, but in a substitute way, effectively reducing large parts of the country from ordinary investments.
Relaunching sustainable and inclusive growth
The social dialogue and the role of the economic and social partnership for the implementation of cohesion policies capable of reducing territorial gaps and inequalities must be concretely strengthened, especially now in the era of the great digital and green transitions, in a historic moment, that is, in to which it is central to relaunch the sustainable, social and inclusive growth of our country through effective use of extraordinary (Next Generation EU, starting from the PNRR) and ordinary (programming cycles of the Structural Funds) European Funds, in complementarity with the National Development and Cohesion and other national resources.
The new elements envisaged in the 2021-2027 Partnership Agreement, including the right to vote, regular thematic and sectoral technical tables, involvement before the publication of the Notices, contribute to identifying a new working method that will be implemented in collaboration with the public administrations responsible for the national and regional programs starting with the new programming cycle. The investments necessary to build a new development model with a high social, economic and environmental impact are necessarily correlated to the ability to develop an integrated planning based on a multi-stakeholder method; otherwise the risk is not to generate processes that really change the living and working conditions of people in the territories.
The Youth Guarantee case
In this sense, the case of the Youth Guarantee financed in the 2014-2020 planning cycle is emblematic, a program which, according to the latest implementation data, risks having a disengagement of resources equal to almost 30% of the initial allocation, in a country that holds the record in negative in Europe by number and historical trend of NEETs. The causes are many: among these, having positively involved the economic and social partnership in some crucial phases of reprogramming, but having excluded it in those of implementation and monitoring. For example, the experimental measures identified to reach and raise awareness among the most vulnerable young people have not been implemented in any territory. Or the Fund for the creation of financing instruments for social impact investments (Social Impact Investments Fund) was not launched, which was supposed to support the creation of centers of
excellent training, fundamental today for the implementation of the Employability Guarantee Program financed by the PNRR.
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