This online course will include discussion of the Coronavirus Response Investment Initiative as it relates to Cohesion Policy and to ESF. We will look at the new emergency Amending Regulations. We will consider how the remaining €37 billion budget of 2014-2020 can be used for emergency health and economic development measures – supporting the health sector and labour markets.

The progress of current programmes and projects will be severely impacted in most Member States. What will happen to delayed projects? Payment claims? Output targets and the Performance Framework? We will attempt to draw together experiences from around the EU.

We will also try to assess how the health emergency might impact on new programmes.

ESF will become ESF+ for the new programming period, 2021-2027. What will your new ESF+ programmes look like? Are you able to identify your priorities for your new programmes and do you know what lessons must be taken forward from current and previous programmes?

This EIPA online course examines these questions and assesses progress of ongoing ESF programmes. We will compare the requirements of the current and new programming periods. We will focus on some recent cases of good practice, from Italy, UK and around the EU.

EIPA experts will build on three successful EIPA seminar-workshops recently delivered under contract to the Flanders Region, the Brussels Capital Region, and the Wallonie region – assisting them with the preparation of a new generation of ESF+ programmes.

How we work

The webinar will be led by highly experienced EIPA experts/consultants, Marco Lopriore and Robin Smail, who have been working with the ESF for more than 20 years. There will be keynote interventions from the European Commission (DG EMPL).

We aim to make the webinar as interactive as possible. Participants will have ample opportunity to exchange views informally on the seminar topics. You are invited to send us your problems, issues and questions before the webinar, if you wish. We will do our best to address the problems / answer the questions during the webinar!