EUROPEAN COMMISSION Brussels, 20.5.2019 COM(2019) 234 final REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION Report from the Commission on the mid-term evaluation of the European Union Programme for Employment and Social Innovation (EaSI) {SWD(2019) 182 final}



Report from the Commission European Programme for Employment and Social Innovation mid-term evaluation 1. Background to EaSI The European Union Programme for Employment and Social Innovation (EaSI) — implemented under direct and indirect management modes — is designed to promote a high level of quality and sustainable employment, guarantee adequate and decent social protection, combat social exclusion and poverty, and improve working conditions in the Member States and in other participating countries (the EFTA/EEA, EU candidate and pre-candidate countries). The total financial envelope established in the EaSI Regulation for 2014 to 2020 is EUR 919 469,000. The programme has three axes: ■PROGRESS supports policy making and implementation by: producing policy evidence, organising information-sharing and mutual learning activities, creating better conditions for social innovation, and helping to build capacity for EU and national organisations. ■EURES provides information and services for jobseekers and employers and runs targeted mobility schemes to enable people to find work in other parts of the EU. ■Microfinance/Social Entrepreneurship supports access to microcredit for vulnerable persons and micro-enterprises, and institutional capacity building for microcredit providers. Cross-cutting aims — such as gender equality, non-discrimination, and combating poverty and social exclusion — are supported at every level. 2.Scope of the mid-term evaluation The mid-term evaluation assessed — under the Article 13(1) of the EaSI Regulation and the Better Regulation Guidelines — progress made in achieving the programme’s objectives and its continuing relevance, its efficiency and use of resources, its policy coherence in relation to other instruments and its EU added value. EaSI’s governance was also examined. The evaluation aimed to recommend adjustments to the way the programme is run in order to improve performance in future implementation and to contribute to preparation for the post-2020 period. The evaluation covered EaSI activities from January 2014 to December 2016. It covered the programme’s full geographical scope and relevant stakeholders — in particular, the EaSI Committee, policy committees, social partners, national authorities and bodies, and key EU civil society organisations. The research combined six main methods to answer the evaluation questions: analysis of secondary data, an open public consultation, semi-structured interviews, a focus group, case studies and a survey of beneficiaries. The mid-term evaluation is presented as a staff working document (SWD), based on the outcomes of an external evaluation study commissioned by the Commission and other sources of evidence — in particular EaSI performance monitoring reports, Annual Management Reports of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (DG EMPL) and other relevant evaluations. In compliance with Article 13 of the EaSI Regulation, this report summarises the main results of the mid-term evaluation for the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions, and the public. 3.Main results and lessons learned The following sections present the conclusions reached on the evaluation’s six main themes: relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, coherence, EU added value and programme governance.

The evaluation has however obvious limitations. Few projects were finished in 2016, which limited the data available, while other projects started have not had the time to produce a full set of outputs and impacts. There are also few benchmarks available, as there is no programme comparable to EaSI in terms of scale and coverage. EaSI’s performance should thus be seen in the context of its role in the wider support system including EU and national policy initiatives. To overcome/mitigate these limitations, the mid-term evaluation cross-checked multiple sources of evaluative evidence, combined quantitative and qualitative methods and tools, ensured transparency of data sources and systematically checked findings against input from stakeholders. One important finding of this exercise was that mid-term, as set out in the EaSI Regulation, was too early for the evaluation. Future evaluations should be scheduled to allow more results and wider impacts to emerge and support the analysis. 3.1.Relevance EaSI’s relevance was assessed in relation to its general objectives, the specific objectives for the three axes and the allocation of resources between them. The evaluation confirmed that EaSI’s rationale and its five general objectives are still highly relevant, particularly in the evaluation time-frame context of the aftermath of the financial and economic crisis — with a welcome but slow recovery — and trends likely to impact the EU for years to come. For instance, with a large influx of refugees and immigrants to EU Member States, the number of vulnerable people has drastically increased, making their successful integration one of the highest EU priorities. Despite the limited data sets available, progress is being made towards delivering on all general and specific EaSI objectives. EaSI helped to increase awareness of EU policy inputs into social inclusion and poverty reduction, to improve perceptions of the cross-border potential for employment, to rapidly test and implement innovative measures, and to increase access to microfinance loans and support for entrepreneurship. EaSI also facilitated policy change through comparative research, exchanges and capacity-building, thereby helping different stakeholders to influence the formulation and implementation of socioeconomic policies in the programme’s participating countries. Still, EaSI’s relevance and impacts could be further improved. Analytical tools, dissemination events and innovative projects should focus more on gender issues, youth unemployment, inequalities (income, education, skills) and the fight against social exclusion, putting greater focus on transferability and the possibility of upscaling social innovations. PROGRESS and Microfinance/Social Entrepreneurship can play an important role in this process by prioritising social inclusion activities and access to finance for vulnerable groups, i.e. people who are at risk of social and financial exclusion. EURES should continue to fund projects targeted at groups with a clear economic need (as is the case with ‘Your first EURES job’ and cross-border partnerships). The topics of mutual learning activities — e.g. labour market integration measures for young people, asylum seekers, refugees and long-term unemployed people, future skills needs — closely followed priorities set in the Employment Guidelines and the country-specific recommendations as part of the European Semester cycle of economic coordination. The European Semester was also supported by other EaSI-funded analytical activities, in particular the Employment and Social Development Report and the Labour Force Survey. In its analytical activities, the programme should prioritise the exchange of good practices between policy-makers across the participating countries through mutual learning, awareness-raising and dissemination activities. Similarly, disseminating good practices from different countries — including social experimentation — more widely at operational level creates awareness of innovative practices and helps national and local actors to deliver better services and products. So maintaining EU-level networks is crucial to aligning the different policy agendas across different levels of government and the participating countries. In practice, more flexible resource allocation across the three programme axes (instead of the current minimum indicative percentages set in the EaSI Regulation) would allow more scope for transferring budgets between them when needed. This could particularly help Microfinance/Social Entrepreneurship axis, where spending is demand-driven. Greater flexibility would also boost responsiveness to emerging needs (e.g. new initiatives such as the ‘European Solidarity Corps’, ‘New start for social dialogue’, ‘New skills agenda for Europe’ or the European Labour Authority - ELA). 3.2.Effectiveness The programme’s three axes differ in terms of their effectiveness in generating outcomes and achieving objectives, and in bringing about change. Thus, PROGRESS is most effective in facilitating information-sharing, mutual learning and dialogue, and in developing and disseminating comparative and analytical knowledge. One of EURES’ more effective activities has been contributing to the development of a transparent labour market in terms of demand and supply. Evidence on Microfinance/Social Entrepreneurship suggests that EaSI funding has increased the availability of and access to finance across the participating countries. Financial intermediaries have included vulnerable groups in their activities, but there were important discrepancies between countries. In most cases, even, vulnerable groups do not represent the majority of final beneficiaries. They still encounter barriers to accessing finance. Based on the latest annual impact data (September 2016), on average 35 % of micro-borrowers are women, over 40 % are below 30 years old or above 50 years old, close to 20 % are unemployed persons (versus 62 % self-employed/entrepreneur), and 10 % have a migrant background (non-EU). More actions need to focus on vulnerable groups, and therefore explore the possibility of introducing minimum targets for them for the remainder of the EaSI programme. The financial instruments are demand-driven, so it should be possible to implement them with a degree of flexibility to meet market demand. Policy-based incentives for the EIF may be considered when designing future instruments to further promote outreach to vulnerable groups. The evaluation pinpointed a number of ways of improving effectiveness. PROGRESS, while maintaining its focus on policy themes relevant to and appreciated by stakeholders (employment and working conditions), should improve efforts to deliver social policy experimentation by revising its focus on that and its procedures for evaluating and selecting projects, and by making it easier to scale up such projects. For EURES, a longer implementation period (2 years at a minimum) should be considered, combined with measures for reducing the administrative burden of call for proposals management, to enable stakeholders to properly develop projects, implement them, measure their effectiveness and ensure their sustainability. For Microfinance/Social Entrepreneurship, greater focus on vulnerable groups for the second EaSI implementation period is proposed, e.g. setting a target for the share/number of vulnerable groups in calls for proposals. 3.3.Efficiency The evaluation provides insights into the match between available means and the programme’s objectives. While the financial means available were sufficient to implement PROGRESS and EURES activities, the budget for the Microfinance window of the third axis was too low. The high uptake of the EaSI guarantee instrument, part of Microfinance/Social Entrepreneurship axis, put pressure on its budget and resulted in full utilisation of the Microfinance budget. As Social Entrepreneurship window usually requires much larger loans than Microfinance window, there were fewer loans provided. This had an impact on the number of contracts signed. The third axis insufficient budget for the first implementation period was remedied in the meantime by enabling a frontloading of the EaSI budget earmarked for the later years 2017-2020 and making it available sooner in order to meet the high market demand. This frontloading was made possible by means of a guarantee under the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI). Indeed, in response to the strong demand for the EaSI guarantee instrument, the Microfinance/Social Entrepreneurship axis has received in December 2017 a EUR 100m top-up from EFSI. This will lead to an increase in the overall volume of actions for the EaSI guarantee instrument and allow the EIF to implement a significant extra number of operations. The efficiency of PROGRESS could be further improved by introducing changes and reducing the administrative burden in the project award and implementation stages. Moreover, it is not always clear to applicants whether co-financing should be in labour costs or in actual cash value. This should be clarified in the calls’ terms of reference. Regarding EURES, larger amounts were committed to the allocation for transparency of job vacancies than originally planned, in order to introduce new IT; however, the development and delivery of services remained relatively stable.