On the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing the European Social Fund as part of the National and Regional Partnership Plan set out in Regulation (EU) […] [NRPPlan] establishing conditions for the implementation of the Union support to quality employment, skills and social inclusion for the period from 2028 to 2034

3.Stresses that, under the Commission’s proposal, the exact level of financial resources allocated to the ESF objectives set out in the proposed NRP Regulation cannot be determined ex ante, as no dedicated envelope is established in the basic act and the effective allocation will depend on the programming choices made by each Member State in the design of their national plans, fundamentally hampering the budgetary authority’s ability to assess, monitor and defend the level of investment in social cohesion throughout the programming period; recalls that beneficiaries need predictability in order to properly implement the funds;

4.Considers, therefore, that the ESF must remain a stand-alone and separate programme with a dedicated financial envelope of EUR 124.19 billion in current prices (equivalent to EUR 110.73 billion in 2025 constant prices) for promoting upward social convergence, quality employment and equal opportunities, in order to maintain a level of investment commensurate with the objectives of the European Pillar of Social Rights, its action plan and headline targets; reiterates the need to avoid fragmentation and maintain the horizontal implementation framework, including overarching rules and principles such as respect for the rule of law and fundamental rights, which should apply uniformly across all policies covered by the NRPPs, while ensuring coherent and consistent implementation provisions; calls on the lead committee to coordinate its amendments to ensure that there is no contradiction between the proposed NRP and ESF regulations;

5.Considers that sufficient resources, including human, technical and IT resources, must be available from the outset and throughout the entire programming period of the 2028-2034 MFF to ensure an effective implementation of the ESF;

6.Deplores the lack of a breakdown of the budget of the ESF, particularly compared to the situation for the same actions in the present MFF; notes that this would give the Commission great latitude to shift and decide on spending priorities during implementation; stresses that simplification and flexibility must not come at the expense of transparency and oversight by the budgetary authority; recommends, therefore, that the proposed ESF Regulation follow the established practice of allocating defined shares of resources to specific objectives, including social inclusion, the Child Guarantee, homelessness, material deprivation and the Youth Guarantee; recommends, therefore, that the basic act include a sufficient number of dedicated budget lines to adequately reflect the different policy areas, with reference amounts for specific objectives;

7.Deplores the lack of a sufficiently detailed indicative budgetary nomenclature for the ESF in the Legislative Financial and Digital Statement (LFDS) accompanying the proposed NRP Regulation; considers that this will hamper oversight and the budgetary authority’s ability to accurately steer policy priorities in the annual budgetary procedure; expresses concerns that the overly aggregated budgetary architecture would dramatically increase the Commission’s discretion in transferring and reallocating resources without a decision from the budgetary authority, and would severely limit parliamentary oversight; recommends, therefore, a more detailed nomenclature that properly reflects the ESF objectives and structure and enhances transparency, accountability and parliamentary control;

8.Recalls that the budgetary nomenclature must be established in line with Article 47(2) of the Financial Regulation, which provides that each title must correspond to a policy area and each chapter, as a rule, to a programme or an activity, in line with the principles of specification, sound financial management and transparency; considers, therefore, that explicit nomenclature for the programmes’ policy window and objectives should be included in the basic act; recommends that the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs amend the proposal to include an annex defining the nomenclature of the programme; insists that the budgetary nomenclature forms an integral part of Parliament’s negotiating position and must be discussed in interinstitutional negotiations; considers, in this regard, that the revised LFDS must be part of the final political agreement;

9.Insists that sufficiently detailed and sound legislation, with an appropriate level of governance, is a condition for proper budgetary decision-making and adequate parliamentary oversight during budget implementation; recommends introducing provisions to strengthen control over how the budget is mobilised and spent; considers that the so-called ‘steering mechanism’ can in no way be a substitute for Parliament’s legislative and budgetary powers, and cannot be conceived without a sound governance architecture that ensures the effective exercise of such powers;

10.Believes that all substantive policy choices such as programme objectives, spending priorities, financial allocations, funding rates, definitions and calculation methods must be determined in the ESF Regulation, with full respect for Parliament’s prerogatives as a co-legislator and one arm of the EU’s budgetary authority;

11.Takes note of the proposed complementarity between the ESF and other funding instruments, especially under the NRPPs, the European Competitiveness Fund and Erasmus+; stresses that enhanced complementarity between instruments must not come at the expense of traceability of expenditure or the prerogatives of the budgetary authority; underlines that the contribution of the ESF to operations financed jointly with other instruments must be explicitly identifiable at all stages of the budgetary cycle; stresses, in this regard, that any such contribution must be duly reflected in the programme performance statement for the ESF; insists that the budgetary authority retain full control over how resources are combined across instruments and over the effective contribution of each programme to EU priorities, specifically through detailed budgetary nomenclature; stresses that enhanced complementarity between programmes must not lead to disproportionate complexity for beneficiaries; calls for EU funding to be clearer, more accessible and more coherent in order to facilitate uptake and maximise the impact of investments;

12.Recalls the proposal for a regulation on establishing a budget expenditure tracking and performance framework and other horizontal rules for the Union programmes and activities, which establishes a single streamlined list for performance indicators and monitoring and evaluation provisions, some of which are relevant for the ESF; underlines that any change to the architecture, objectives and eligible actions under the programme will need to be appropriately reflected in the monitoring provisions under Annex I of the performance regulation, as part of the process of amending and negotiating that regulation; points out that, while sectoral legislation can supplement the performance regulation, for instance as regards programme evaluations, it should remain consistent with the provisions of that regulation;

13.Recalls that under Article 6(2) of the Financial Regulation, the establishment and implementation of the budget must comply with a general regime of conditionality in case of breaches of the rule of law; underlines, furthermore, that Article 6(3) of the same regulation requires the Member States and the Commission, in the implementation of the budget, to ensure compliance with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and respect the values on which the EU is founded, as enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union;

14.Calls for consistent and harmonised requirements for Member States regarding the prevention, detection, reporting and correction of fraud from the outset of the implementation period; stresses, furthermore, that robust control and audit frameworks must be established to protect the EU’s financial interests across all funds, programmes and financial instruments of the future MFF.