EUROPEAN COMMISSION DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion

Social Market Economy in Member States I : ESF ESF Policy and Legislation

Brussels, EMPL/E/1

Informal Technical Working Group Meeting

24-25 March 2015-Brussels, Belgium

Draft: Chairperson's conclusions

0. Adoption of draft agenda

The draft agenda was adopted

1. Conclusions of the previous TWG

As the conclusions of the previous TWG were made available two days prior to the meeting, participants were given until the 27th of March CoB to send comments.

NOTA BENE: As no comments were sent to the EC by the deadline, the conclusions were adopted.

2. Update on Draft Implementing Acts and Delegated Acts

The Commission presented the state of play of draft implementing acts and delegated acts. The state of play is uploaded in CIRCAbc.

3. State of play of OP negotiations

The Commission presented the state of play of OP negotiations which included an update on the setting up of monitoring committees. A tour de table was carried out in order to allow Member States to provide an update on the deployment of monitoring committees.

The Commission recalled the importance of implementing the principles established in the European Code of Conduct on Partnership, and, stated that due to its importance this topic would be further discussed in the next meeting of the ESF TWG. At the next meeting, the ESF TWG would also discuss how the selection criteria were ensuring alignment with the CSR.

4. Communication: reminder of communication requirements

Commission européenne/Europese Commissie, 1049 Bruxelles/Brussel, BELGIQUE/BELGIË - Tel. +32 22991111 Office: SPA/3 1-22 - Tel. direct line +32 229-85480 - Fax +32 229-77453 http://ec.europa.eu/ The Commission reminded delegations of the need to nominate communication officers at national and at OP level, as well as of the obligation to put in place a national website or website portal.

Following the presentation the Commission mentioned that might be useful to include this topic in the agenda again towards the end of 2015.

5. ESF Management: audit state of play

The Commission presented the audit state of play.

The Commission informed the TWG that it had decided to change the scope of the audits which would be performed starting in May 2015. Rather than carrying out performance audits the EC would at this stage carry out preventive audits on data reliability, aiming at preventing potential problems. Therefore audit opinions would not be issued at this stage but rather recommendations.

Due to the high political importance of the YEI, the initiative would also be subject to specific audits which would follow the same setup as the ESF.

Selected Member States would be informed in the coming days by letter; audit missions would last on average one week. The audits would lead to a horizontal report which would feature the main findings and general recommendations for a better implementation of the ESF and the YEI.

Not all Member States would be audited, since as usual countries would be selected on the basis of volume of payments/size of OPs, risk etc. In fact a pilot audit had taken place in France, and the other selected countries included Poland, Spain, Italy and Portugal.

Following a question by Malta the EC stated that the overarching questions could be made available. The methodology had been provided in the framework of a past TWG, but could again be made available via CIRCAbc.

Poland asked a question regarding the respect of the UN Convention on Disability, since it had to fulfil an ex-ante conditionality in this area. The UN Convention required that both physical and psychological handicap should be taken into account. Poland requested the EC how could the latter be taken into account in practical terms. The Commission stated that it required further analysis.

The Commission also updated the TWG on the state of play of ARACHNE.

The Commission was about to launch a contract which would lead to significant changes being made to ARACHNE. The Commission also reported that since the last time this topic has been presented to the TWG, several member states and regions of member states had expressed their interest in using ARACHNE. In addition, DG EMPL mentioned that other services of the Commission had expressed an interest in using ARACHNE, in particular DG MARE which was considering the purchase of licenses.

The Commission had carried out seminars in several member states in order to promote this tool and was willing to consider requests for information sessions/trainings by anyone interested.

2 6. Simplification: state of play

The Commission presented the simplification state of play.

The Commission underlined that simplification was very high on its agenda and was a key priority for Commissioner Thyssen, who wishes to see 50% of ESF expenditure carried out via SCO by 2017 and who would address this issue systematically in her meetings with Ministers.

In DG Employment a task force on JAP and SCO had been created, including representatives from the geographical desks, the coordination unit and auditors.

The Commission mentioned that, so far, it had been providing theoretical advice on SCOs. However from now onwards it planned to provide hands on advice to Member States which would help speeding up progress in the implementation of SCOs and avoid delays with the approval of article 14.1 requests and via more practical and concrete seminars.

The Commission emphasized that although the geographical desks of DG Employment might be sent documents whenever Member States sought informal feedback, the only way to obtain legal certainty would be to submit an article 14.1 application. Regarding applications in the framework of article 14.1, although beforehand the Commission had stated that these could be sent till April of each year, from now onwards Member States could send their applications at any time. The Commission underlined the importance of receiving information from Member States applications as early as possible in the process, since this would enable EC services to provide feedback in the drafting of applications and hence to limit mistakes. The 14.1 guidance would be available early May.

In the 2nd quarter of 2015 the Commission would be launching a survey in order to get further information of SCO use in all Member States.

The JAP Guidance would be available end April. The Commission would be keen to see JAP examples from Member States, since so far only Malta expressed an interest in using this tool. EC services would also provide support to MS willing to develop a JAP.

The EGESIF guidance on SCO was currently being translated and progressively made available on the ESF website (http://ec.europa.eu/esf/main.jsp?catId=3&langId=en). Paper versions could be requested by email ([email protected]).

7. ESF Management: state of play of ESF financial execution

The Commission presented the state of play of ESF financial execution.

As announced prior to the meeting a tour the table was held in order to allow member states to update the Commission on the state of play of nomination of authorities and a to provide forecast on the submission of payments claims. The nomination of authorities was a sine qua non condition for payments to be processed; the Commission asked for the payments forecast in order to foresee an adequate allocation of staff and budget resources during forecast peak moments.

3 8. State Aid: General Block Exemption Regulation

The Commission presented the General Block Exemption regulation, in particular the provisions which are most relevant for the ESF i.e. articles 31 to 35 of the GBER.

The Commission clarified that the guidance note on Simplified Cost Options was its official position on the use of SCOs.

The Commission stated that it would be useful to discuss the GBER and SCOs at the next meeting of the ESF TWG in order to clarify any existing doubts.

9. Youth Employment Initiative: reporting

The Commission presented the state of play of proposal for amending the ESF regulation, namely the results of the discussion held in COREPER the previous day.

The Commission debriefed the ESF Committee on the YEI Learning Seminar of the ESF Evaluation Partnership meeting held on 12 March.

The Commission presented a note which aimed to clarify doubts expressed by Member States following the ESF TWG meeting of 26 February.

Belgium wondered whether the ESF Evaluation Partnership was the right place to discuss monitoring issues, since in Belgium's view monitoring was carried out to feed into programme implementation and not to feed into evaluation reports.

The Commission promised to get back to this issue at a forthcoming meeting of the TWG since this topic was a key factor in the present programming period in the framework of the monitoring of policy objectives.

10. Financial Instruments

The Commission provided an update on the state of play of financial instruments and the European Fund for Strategic Investment's regulation.

Poland and Malta mentioned that banks tend to favour loans in areas that have a higher return rate for them, and the social sector was not attractive for banks, as risks were relatively high and profit margins low. Poland underlined that in future regulations should take into account the specificities of the social sector in order to increase the leverage effect of the use of financial instruments in this area.

The Commission replied that it understood the concerns expressed by Poland and Malta; however the absence of threshold for the use of financial instruments in the ESF, contrary to the ERDF for which the draft EFSI regulation foresaw clear targets, was an indicator that the EC proposal took into account some of the specificities of the areas covered by the ESF.

Poland stated that the Commission should investigate the use of reimbursable grants which was more adequate for the social sector. The Commission replied that this

4 possibility was already being considered. In fact guidance was being prepared in this area.

11. Transnational Cooperation: Presentation of results of the Roma Network

The Fondacion Secretariado Gitano presented the outputs of the Roma network financed in the framework of Transnational Cooperation.

The Commission mentioned that in the 2014-2020 a targeted approach via Investment Priority 9.2 had been used in order, as well as mainstreaming in order to reach Roma populations. Most Country Specific Recommendations regarding the Roma focused on problems relating to education, hence funds programmed in this area would also contribute to solving problems in this important area.

12. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union

The Commission presented a letter addressed by five Commissioners (the four ESIF Commissioners and the Justice Commissioner) to Member States regarding the application of the Charter of Fundamental Rights when implementing the ESI Funds.

The Commission announced that guidance on this issue, as well as, on the procedures for handling relevant complaints would be prepared.

AoB

The Commission thanked Ms Rosa Maria Simoes, who announced she was about to retire, for the work she has carried out in the ESF and in the ESF Committee in the last years.

The Long Term Unemployed Initiative was briefly discussed in order to prepare the discussion which would be held in the Plenary meeting the following day.

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