Structural and rural funds

The Structural Funds programming for the 2021-2027 period follows a relatively standard structure, including the following elements in particular:

• 5 priorities or strategic objectives (PO, Policy Objectives): 1. A smarter/competitive Europe, 2. A greener/resilient/low-emission Europe, 3. A more connected Europe, 4. A more social Europe, 5. A Closer Europe, plus allocations for technical assistance to programs;

• Specific declinations of the above priorities for ERDF programming, which includes a sub-priority 2 (a greener Europe) sub-objective related to mobility; and for ESF+ programming, which exclusively addresses priority 4 (a more social Europe) by declining it into five sub-priorities: Employment, Education and Training, Social Inclusion, Innovative Social Actions, Youth Employment;

• More than 40 specific regional policy objectives (RSOs): represent a declination of the strategic objectives and are indicated (in the programming documents and in the following sheets) through the number of the strategic objective of reference, combined with a progressive number – Roman for ERDF (1.i.; 1.ii.; 2.i.; 3.iv… etc.) and Arabic for ESF+ (4.1. to 4.12.);

• 182 focus areas: each of which can be associated with one of the strategic objectives, but in a nonunique relationship (it is possible to associate a focus area with any strategic and specific objective). The intervention sectors are simply numbered with a consecutive code, 001 to 182.

The specificity of each operational program (ROP or NOP) is given:

• from the combination of strategic goals, specific objectives and areas of intervention chosen to address the typical challenges of the target area;

• by the relevant financial allocations, which indicate the indicative sectoral distribution of projects to be launched under the program.

While a careful reading of all reference documents is advisable, the combined analysis of these two variables provides an indicative idea of the fundamental choices made within each ROP and NOP, as well as the possibilities it offers to those interested in proposing projects.

The following intentionally concise prospectuses thus emphasize two main elements: 1) the links and documents to consult to learn about and work on the program; 2) the thematic structure and specific areas of intervention of the program.

For those interested and for a better understanding of Structural Funds programming, we point out theexistence of a common framework of indicators, the elements of which are taken up within the programming documents (codes RCO For Output indicators, RCR for Outcome indicators) and which are a further declination of it. Their analysis provides additional insight into the type of actions, projects and beneficiaries considered by the different components of each program.