With the creation of the Lisbon strategy the EU triggered a process that interconnects social protection and social inclusion policies (based on OMC Social Protection Social Inclusion) with those for employment and growth: “the interaction between the OMC and the revised Lisbon process should be a dual one – social protection and inclusion policies should support growth and employment objectives, and growth and employment objectives should support social objectives” .
The main objective of this evaluation was to assess the support ESF during the 2000-2006 programming period provided to the SPSI OMC at four levels: objectives, interventions, stakeholders/ target groups and indicators. The assumption of this evaluation is that these two tools, in order to be efficient, need to be coherent at all 4 levels. ‘Support’ is assessed in relation to two key criteria: coherence (defined as a measure of the correspondence and consistency between ESF and SPSI OMC) and complementarity (defined as a measure of reciprocity between the ESF and SPSI OMC). The evaluation seeks to understand if the ESF is or could be made to be a more (within the existing framework) suitable tool for supporting the SPSI OMC, and if yes to provide operational recommendations for the new programmes (2007-2013) and the next round of Structural Funds (post 2013), in particular the ESF as well as the next cycle of OMC, the Lisbon Strategy (EU 2020) and the future Social Policy Agenda.
This report was commissioned by the European Commission, DG Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, under the service contract signe with IRS- Istituto per la Ricerca Sociale in association with The Tavistock Institute, The Research Institute for Quality of Life and The Rehabilitation Foundation.