The impact of the European social fund in Romania

Abstract

Enhancing economic, social, and geographical cohesion has been a primary goal of the EU since its founding. In order to do this, decision-makers developed and put into effect the Union’s Cohesion program, which is currently the primary investment program in Europe and has a budget that is around one-third that of the European Union as a whole. The Cohesion Policy includes many funds, each with distinct goals. This paper focuses on the European Social Fund (ESF), which is the main tool used by the European Union to help its regional populations create jobs and accumulate human capital. We provide an empirical analysis of the effects of ESF on its primary objective, which is education. To do this, we relate population shares of with particular education to the ESF per capita in Romania, for the 2010-2022 period.

Keywords

• european social fund
• budget of europe union
• human capital