Through the European Social Fund (ESF) and the Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived (FEAD), the European Union (EU) acts as a ‘material supporter’ of national welfare states. Remarkably, the European Social Fund Plus, integrating ESF and FEAD, is presented as the main financial instrument to implement the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR). This raises the question of what these levers can do in terms of financial support, especially for Member States with greater social needs. By using the Social Scoreboard indicators that monitor the implementation of the EPSR, we analyse the size and distribution of ESF and FEAD according to Member States' economic capacity, social needs and efforts required to meet the European social goals. We find that the funds benefit relatively more the poorer Member States who also tend to have greater social needs. However, especially for ESF, there are significant deviations from this general pattern. Some countries consistently receive less funding than others with similar levels of social needs, and vice versa. Moreover, if, from the perspective of upward convergence, the budgets are expressed as a percentage of the efforts required to lift all income-poor citizens to the EU-wide at-risk-of-poverty threshold, countries who need to make the greatest efforts receive less funding. These outcomes are partly driven by the funds' allocation rules, which give only little importance to the great social discrepancies between countries. This raises the question whether social needs should be taken more into account in the distribution of the funds.

中文翻译：

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实现欧洲社会权利支柱：实现基于需求的欧洲社会基金分配？

通过欧洲社会基金 (ESF) 和欧洲援助最贫困人口基金 (FEAD)，欧盟 (EU) 充当国家福利国家的“物质支持者”。值得注意的是，整合了 ESF 和 FEAD 的 European Social Fund Plus 被视为实施欧洲社会权利支柱 (EPSR) 的主要金融工具。这就提出了这些杠杆在财政支持方面可以做什么的问题，特别是对于具有更大社会需求的会员国。通过使用监测 EPSR 实施情况的社会记分牌指标，我们根据成员国的经济能力、社会需求和实现欧洲社会目标所需的努力来分析 ESF 和 FEAD 的规模和分布。我们发现，这些基金使较贫穷的成员国受益更多，而这些成员国往往也有更大的社会需求。然而，特别是对于 ESF，与这种一般模式存在显着差异。与社会需求水平相似的其他国家相比，一些国家获得的资助一直较少，反之亦然。此外，如果从向上收敛的角度来看，预算表示为将所有收入贫困公民提升到欧盟范围内的贫困风险阈值所需努力的百分比，则需要做出最大贡献的国家努力获得的资金较少。这些结果部分是由资金分配规则驱动的，这些规则很少重视国家之间巨大的社会差异。