Social investment package

The Commission urges EU countries to put more emphasis on social investment. Social investment means enhancing people's capacities and supporting their participation in society and the labour market. This will benefit individuals' prosperity, boost the economy and help the EU emerge from the crisis stronger, more cohesive and more competitive.
The potential usefulness of cross-nationally comparable reference budgets has drawn the attention of the European Commission, which included in its communication on a Social Investment Package several references to developing and using reference budgets in the European Union.

Towards a common framework for developing cross-nationally comparable reference budgets in Europe (ImPRovE)

 

ImPRovE (Poverty Reduction in Europe: Social Policy and Innovation) is an international research project that aims to improve the basis for evidence-based policy making in the area of poverty, inequality, social policy and social innovation in Europe. It is carried out by the ImPRovE Consortium and co-financed by the European Commission (Project officer at the European Commission: Marc Goffart). The project runs from March 2012 till February 2016 and is co-ordinated by the Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy (University of Antwerp, Belgium).
The two central questions driving the ImPRovE project are:

1. How can social cohesion be achieved in Europe?

2. How can social innovation complement, reinforce and modify macro-level policies and vice versa?

The output of ImPRovE will include over 55 research papers, about 16 policy briefs and at least 3 scientific books. The ImPRovE Consortium will organise two international conferences (March 2014 and February 2016). In addition, ImPRovE will develop a new database of local projects of social innovation in Europe, cross-national comparable reference budgets for 6 countries (Belgium, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Spain and the United Kingdom) and will strongly expand the available policy scenarios in the European microsimulation model EUROMOD.

More information: http://improve-research.eu/