Presentation by Gábor Tóth, Hungary, at a FEANTSA seminar on "Funding strategies: Building the case for homelessness", hosted by the Committee of the Regions, June 2012

1. EU Structural Funds – what
opportunities for funding
homelessness services?
TÓTH Gábor
Brussels
8 June 2012

2. ESF support – an example
• HU project launched in 2009
• EUR 9 million, 3500 participants
• Agencies of local municipalities and NGOs
• Labour market services
Diagnosis
Action plan
Job-search skills
Training
Job application
coupled with
• Housing support
Searching a rental
Rent

3. Main principles of the new ESF from
homelessness policy aspect
• Concentration on Europe 2020 Strategy
• Better coordination and harmonisation between
the funds
• Focus on results
• Simplification

4. Concentration
• Total cohesion policy: EUR 336 billion
• At least 25% ESF: EUR 84 billion
Including the successor of the food aid programme
• 20% of ESF to social inlcusion

5. Better coordination of funds – integrated
programming
• CSF at EU level and Partnership Agreement at
national level
• Planning: addressing the needs of poorest areas or
most disadvantaged target groups
• Possibility of multifund programmes combining
ERDF, ESF and the Cohesion Fund
• Possibility to finance operations from more than one
fund (CLLD, ITI)
Easier to combine housing infrastructure with
supportive measures

6. Result orientation
• Ex-ante conditionality on active inclusion
• A national strategy for poverty reduction is in place that
• is in accordance with the national poverty and social
exclusion target
• indicates clearly measures to prevent and combat
segregation in all fields
• Joint action plans
e.g.: number of additional places in sheltered homes, number of
homeless participants in active labour market programmes having a
job 6 months following the programme

7. Access to funds
• Simplification
• Harmonised rules of funds
• Simplified cost options
• Enhanced partnership
• Possibility to involve NGOs through global grants
• Appropriate amount of ESF resources to be allocated to
capacity-building of NGOs

8. Next steps
• On-going: negotiations with Council and EP on
regulations
• Final regulations: end of 2012, early 2013
• On-going: preparation of COM position papers for
discussons with MS on Partnership Agreements and
Operational programmes
• First half of 2013: formal negotiations with MS
• Second half of 2013: adoption of OPs