News
Bridging the gap between enterprise and
social policy
July 2007
'Putting the heart into the Lisbon process', the EQUAL
policy forum on inclusive and social entrepreneurship, held in Hanover on
4-6 June 2007, successfully brought the ideas of entrepreneurship and social
inclusion together in a way not seen before. It laid the foundations of a
platform for inclusive entrepreneurship in the new Structural Funds
programming period.
The Forum venue, the imposing Kuppelsaal of
Hanover Congress Centre, reminded delegates of the Roman Pantheon
Entrepreneurship can certainly be a tool for inclusion,
as Gerd Andres, Parliamentary Secretary of State for Employment, made clear
in his opening speech. "Germany is a country of start-ups," he declared. "We
see 500,000 new businesses founded each year – and half of them are started
by unemployed people. EQUAL is there to help them."
Nikolaus G. van der Pas
Nikolaus van der Pas, Director-General of the
Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities DG of the European
Commission, agreed. Referring to the insistence of the EU's Spring Council
meeting in March that we must make the social aspect of the Lisbon strategy
visible, he was keen to ensure the work of the 700 EQUAL partnerships
focussing on entrepreneurship is not wasted. "To continue their work till
2013, I believe we need to build a platform for inclusive entrepreneurship
in the new Structural Funds period," he said. "We need to make start-ups by
so-called 'disadvantaged' people a normal thing, and transnational work is
an important part of achieving that." His suggestion was warmly supported.
The evidence was there to back up the case. Raimund
Becker, member of the executive board of the Bundesagentur für Arbeit
(Federal Employment Agency), which spends €2.3 bn a year to help start-ups,
noted that two years later 70% of them are still in business. Maria Nowak
told the story of French microcredit organisation ADIE (Association pour le
Droit à l'Initiative Economique) which, since its start as a voluntary
organisation 19 years ago, has helped more than 40,000 people with its
'enterprise escalator' to set up in business for themselves. "One-third of
France's new jobs come from start-ups," she said. Danielle Benn, Rachel
Bonar and Clarence Dosoe, with their coach Paul Eric Busropan from the
Women@Work in Action project in Amsterdam Zuidoost, gave a first-hand
account of learning to be an entrepreneur. Not to mention the 35 speakers
who contributed their experience to the forum's workshops.
Challenge - solution - strategy
The forum attracted 220 participants from 26 countries.
They took part in 15 workshops, arranged in a logical three-stage
progression. The first session examined what the challenges are – urban
unrest, rural decline, industrial restructuring, activation, severe
exclusion and public service reform – which inclusive entrepreneurship can
help to answer. The second session showcased some of the solutions that have
been tried around the EU – from France's widespread microcredit system to
employee-owned homecare businesses in NE England. The third and final
session considered how to put these solutions together to form coherent
strategies for the future use of the structural funds.
How will these entrepreneurial strategies be taken
forward? The Structural Funds Regulations 2007 – 2013 call for both the
European Regional Fund (ERDF) and the European Social Fund (ESF) to promote
entrepreneurship and social cohesion. In addition, the transnational
cooperation facility of the ESF and the territorial cooperation programmes
of the ERDF will support exchange of experience, networks, and the
development of joint tools and methods. The European Social Fund has granted
support for establishing an inclusive entrepreneurship platform and is has
offered to continue its support.
Graham Meadows, recently retired Director General of
the European Commission's Regional Policy DG, pointed out the dangers of
leaving everything to mainstream politics and market forces. He sees an
opportunity for inactive or unemployed people to generate a more stable
income by becoming self-employed, and for part-time or informal businesses
to develop into a registered full-time business. In addition, social
enterprise is an underestimated doorway to enterprise. "There is a lot of
work to do to change the minds of policy makers, in particular to make them
aware that the promotion of inclusive entrepreneurship is an integral part
of the Lisbon reform strategy." Gerhard Bräunling of the EQUAL unit in the
Employment DG, stressed that Member States and regions have boosted efforts
to include disadvantaged people in the workforce in order to raise the
activity rate, one of the Lisbon targets.
Stephan Weil, Mayor of Hanover, welcomes
forum participants in Hanover Zoo
According to Welsh MP and former cabinet minister, Alun
Michael, we have to stop thinking in 'silos': "The Lisbon agenda is not just
about China and broadband. We need to get out of our silo and make the most
of the transformational possibility that social enterprise offers. We need
to see the COPIE tool applied everywhere." Echoing the forum's title, he
placed social enterprises at the heart of the Lisbon agenda, and pointed out
the need for the Commission's Enterprise DG to take seriously issues such as
the regulations on state aid and public procurement, which cause doubt in
the minds of local policy-makers who want to make their purchasing more
socially responsible. In workshop C3, the local council leaders from two
contrasting areas – Nottingham in the UK and Östersund in Sweden – showed
how it could be done, but lawyers, as Mr Michael noted, still find it too
easy to advise "it's easier if you don't".
Enterprise can be an effective way to combat
poverty, said Fintan Farrell of the European Anti Poverty Network (EAPN).
"People at risk of poverty have ideas, and the social economy has the sort
of networks that can make them work," he said. What worried him was the
enormous gap between this reality and the high-tech supply-side rhetoric of
the Lisbon agenda. "EQUAL has too often been at the margins of employment
policy," he said. "We need to have high-level governmental structures at
national and European level to support the social economy and make sure the
work of EQUAL is carried on in the Structural Funds."
Jan Olsson, co-rapporteur of an opinion by the European
Economic and Social Committee on Entrepreneurial Mindsets and the Lisbon
Agenda, felt that entrepreneurship is far broader than simply creating
new businesses. It should permeate all the strands of the Lisbon agenda –
growth, jobs and also inclusion. He proposed that social enterprise should
be included in the employment guidelines currently being drawn up for
2008-2010. He also wholeheartedly supported Mr Van der Pas's proposal to
establish an Entrepreneurship for All platform. In Mr Olsson's view
this must be a permanent, staffed structure, not an ad hoc one.
Sergio Arzeni, head of the OECD's LEED (Local Economic
and Employment Development) programme, felt that although entrepreneurship
was recognised as one of the four 'pillars' of the European employment
strategy when it was adopted in Luxembourg in 1997, what is missing is the
local dimension. "Even in a country like Britain with a low rate of
unemployment measured nationally, pockets can still exist in towns like
Bradford where unemployment is 30%," he noted. "We need more area-based
strategies against unemployment." Mr Arzeni noted that the OECD Ministerial
Conference two weeks previously had issued a statement to the effect that
innovation is not just something technical, but has a social dimension, and
that social capital is important. He deplored the tendency to place social
enterprises in the 'uncompetitive' category. "We have to overcome this," he
said to applause.
The community of practice on inclusive entrepreneurship
- COPIE
Peter Ramsden, one of the COPIE experts, explained how
ESF managers from Flanders, Germany, Spain and Portugal had launched a
Community of Practice "to take the lessons from EQUAL, put them into a
usable format and take them into the next round of the Structural Funds".
Wales, France, Wallonia, the Netherlands and Greece are also participants in
what can be considered as an embryonic "platform for inclusive
entrepreneurship" of the kind recommended earlier by Mr van der Pas.
The members of COPIE know that EQUAL projects have
tried out many innovative solutions, but they feel that there is a risk that
these will be forgotten unless a better link is built between good practice
at project level and mainstream policy at local, regional, Member State and
EU level. This is why they have developed and tested an action planning
methodology based on a 'tool for inclusive entrepreneurship'.
The tool takes policy makers and practitioners
concerned with entrepreneurship through a logical sequence of steps which
helps them to identify the main gaps or challenges to the support system for
entrepreneurship in the four main themes identified by EQUAL – from the
point of view of specific groups. Armed with this knowledge, COPIE has
developed a 'clickable matrix' which allows them to locate the good
practices developed elsewhere to meet similar challenges in the four areas
of culture and conditions, start-up support and training, access to
appropriate finance, and consolidation and growth. Finally, they can bring
both elements together to design an action plan or strategy for inclusive
entrepreneurship for the next period.
In the future the aim is to expand the Community of
Practice to include all those Member States and Regions that are interested
in working on such action plans in the future round of the Structural Funds.
So far the tool has been tested with success in Flanders, Germany, Wales,
Spain and Portugal. It takes about 4-6 weeks to complete, and in addition to
pin-pointing the key policy challenges for inclusive entrepreneurship in a
particular region it provides a method of engaging policy makers, business
advisors and entrepreneurs who otherwise would probably not speak to each
other. During the pilots, most found the process enjoyable and
thought-provoking.
Both the tool and the preliminary bank of 100
transferable 'products' can be consulted on the beta version of the COPIE
website at www.cop.downloadarea.eu.
At a follow-up meeting at the end of the conference, Paul Soto, one of the
experts in entrepreneurship for EQUAL, explained that the aim was now to
extend and consolidate COPIE in preparation for the next round of the
Structural Funds: "By the end of the year we hope to improve the tool and
bank of good practices and test them in more regions".
The way forward
In the forum's closing panel, Michael Heister from the
Federal Ministry of Employment explained how Germany, which currently holds
the EU presidency, intends to play an important role in promoting future
European platforms and co-operation projects on inclusive entrepreneurship.
Francisco Madelino, President of the Employment
and Vocational Training Institute in Portugal, which takes over the
presidency in July, insisted on the need to develop concrete instruments
which "go beyond the macro and meso levels" and bring out the full potential
that local economies can play in the Lisbon Strategy.
- For more information on the Community of Practice on
Inclusive Entrepreneurship, see
www.cop.downloadarea.eu
- Full documentation from the policy forum on inclusive
entrepreneurship is available at:
www.eu2007.bmas.de
- New ! Reflections on the Hannover Policy Forum
- Back to the
article before the
Conference
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