ESF+ – Action grants to support EU networks active in the areas of social economy, social entreprise finance and microfinance – 2025

Objectives :

• To support the development of social economy and social finance in Europe
• To contribute to building up the institutional capacity of stakeholders delivering support to social economy entities, as well as those supporting the development of social finance

Among financed actions

• Analytical activities
• Activities aiming at the strengthening of EU-level networks
• Activities aiming at the creation or strengthening of social economy representative networks and/or social finance networks in EU Member States
• Activities to foster mutual learning, cooperation, and capacity building
• Activities to foster awareness-raising, outreach, communication and dissemination of information about social economy and/or social finance
• Activities aiming at bringing together researchers in the field of social economy and/or social finance with social economy practitioners and/or policymakers at various levels of governance
• Small scale grants

Eligibility

• Be a public or private entity
• Be a non-profit making entity
• Be: an EU-level network whose mission falls under the objectives of this call for proposals, or a research centre, network or entity affiliated with a university active at EU level in the fields of social economy
• Be established in one of the eligible countries:
  • EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories)
  • Non-EU states: : listed EEA countries and countries associated to the
    ESF+ (Click here)
• In case of a single beneficiary, the applicant must be:
  • An EU Network having national member-organisations in at least 14 Member States of the European Union and EaSI strand associated countries
• In the case of a consortium, the coordinator must be:
  • A consortium composed of at least 2 entities, established in at least 7 different EU Member States or associated countries to the programme must be constituted

Additional information

• Initial duration of the action:  between 30 and 36 months
• Contact: : EMPL-SOCIAL-ENTERPRISE@ec.europa.eu

Useful

• Guidelines: Click here
• Other call documents: Click here
• DG website: Click here
• More information: Click here

• Total budget of the call: 13.300 million euro
• Amount of the grant: between 500.000 and 1.500.000 euro
• Funding rate: up to 85% of the total eligible costs