The European Social Fund (ESF) is one of the European Union’s Structural and Investment Funds, created in the Treaty of Rome in 1957 to promote employment and human resource development in all member countries.

In 2021 it was renamed the European Social Fund Plus, as the ESF+ combined four separate funding instruments in the 2014-20 programming period: the European Social Fund (ESF), the Fund for European Aid for the Most Deprived (FEAD), the Youth Employment Initiative, and the European Union Program for Employment and Social Innovation (EaSI).

Member States primarily manage the support under ESF+ and the Commission plays a supervisory role; the funding is therefore implemented through the principle of shared management.

Shared management means that responsibilities must be assumed at the appropriate levels: the Fund’s resources are part of the Community Budget and are administered by the Member States. The commitment assumed by each country implies strict compliance with the guidelines of the European Social Fund, for which an administrative organization has been developed to manage these resources in accordance with its own regulations. The European Social Fund’s investment in each country takes the form of National or Regional Programs. These define the areas of action, objectives and results to be achieved through the European Social Fund Plus program.

Regional Programs: of a regional nature or according to Autonomous Community, dedicated to the purposes stipulated by the Autonomous Communities and co-financed from their budgets or other means of public or private financing. For the period 2021-2027, 19 regional programs have been approved. These programs account for 48% of the total ESF+ allocation for Spain, which amounts to 16,300 million euros.

National Programs: these have a statewide, horizontal and thematic nature, with investment in all the Autonomous Communities and Autonomous Cities. They are co-financed by the General State Administration and by other public or private funding sources. For the period 2021-2027, 4 national programs have been approved. The national programs have been allocated 52% of the total ESF+ funding for Spain.

Of particular note is the Social Inclusion, Child Guarantee and Anti-Poverty Program, which has been allocated a total of 2.06 billion euros.

Intermediary bodies are public or private entities, at the national or autonomous community level, to which the Managing Authority delegates some of its management, monitoring and control functions. The Managing Authority is the national unit responsible for managing the funds under the Ministry of Labor and Social Economy.

On the Fundación MAPFRE website, in the ESF + section, there is a query form available to applicants for the following reasons: doubts related to the management of the call; queries about the functioning of the tool provided for the processing of applications, and incidents related to its functioning.

The electronic processing of the grants is compulsory at all stages of the procedure and must be carried out using the computer app made available to applicants, in line with the instructions and models established for this purpose and available on the Fundación MAPFRE website.

This call is mainly open to third sector organizations as well as other entities, among which are included:

1. The Social Economy organizations and/or companies regulated in Article 5 of Law 5/2011 on Social Economy.
2. The alliances, federations, associations and unions of Social Economy entities covered by Article 7 of Law 5/2011 on Social Economy that have legal status.

The language for registering and processing the grant application is Spanish.

To submit a grant application, organizations must use the app enabled to electronically process applications, which will be available in the ESF+ section of Fundación MAPFRE’s website  https://fseplus.fundacionmapfre.org.

Upon accessing the app and prior to the electronic registration of an application, the legal representatives and contact persons must be identified.

A “User’s Manual/Guide for access and completion” will be made available to users, to facilitate the registration and traceability of the process, as well as to conserve the documentation provided during the process.

Applications are registered by filling out the standardized electronic forms found on the app; these should contain information on the project, its budget and the projected goals.

By accessing the app enabled for electronically processing funding applications, which is available in the ESF+ section of the Fundación MAPRE website https://fseplus.fundacionmapfre.org.

Grant applications will be evaluated in line with the validation and selection process described in the terms and conditions of the call for proposals, and in accordance with the mandatory selection and evaluation criteria established in Annex IV of the call for proposals.

An initial advance of 30% of the grant will be paid by Fundación MAPFRE once the DECA has been formalised. The payment of the aforementioned amount will be made within a maximum period of 10 working days from the date the DECG is received, 230623_V1 30 duly signed by the beneficiary entity, by means of a bank transfer to the account indicated by the beneficiary.

Once the beneficiary has submitted and Fundación MAPFRE has verified the supporting account for the expenditure actually incurred in relation to the first advance, Fundación MAPFRE will proceed to make a second advance of the same percentage and on the same premises of justification and verification of the expenditure of the previous advance. Twelve months after the beginning of the operation, the entities must have presented the justification for at least the first advance.

The final payment, corresponding to the remaining 40% of the total grant amount, will be made once the completion of the operation has been duly justified and, if applicable, any pending expense justifications have been presented.