European Structural and Investment Funds
financial funds of the European Commission for the social, economic and territorial cohesion of the European Union
The European Structural and Investment Funds (ESI Funds, ESIFs) are financial tools governed by a common rulebook, set up to implement the regional policy of the European Union, as well as the structural policy pillars of the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy. They aim to reduce regional disparities in income, wealth and opportunities. Europe's poorer regions receive most of the support, but all European regions are eligible for funding under the policy's various funds and programmes. The current framework is set for a period of seven years, from 2021 to 2027.
Overview
Five ESIFs currently exist:
under the Cohesion Policy:
the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)
the Cohesion Fund (CF)
the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+)
the Just Transition Fund (JTF)
under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP):
the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD)
the European Agricultural Guarantee Fund (EAGF);
under the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP):
the European Maritime, Fisheries and Aquaculture Fund (EMFAF)
ESIFs constitute the majority of total EU spending; nearly half of all ESIF allocations are realised as expenditure in the "real economy" through third party purchases, and are among the largest items of the budget of the European Union. Apart from them, there are also other EU funds that contribute to regional development, in particular the European Agricultural Guarantee Fund (EAGF), the Just Transition Fund, the Connecting Europe Facility, the LIFE programme, the InvestEU Programme, Horizon Europe and Erasmus+.
It is up to the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union to define the tasks, priorities and organisation of the Structural Funds (the Regional Policy framework), through the ordinary legislative procedure and consulting the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions (leading to the publication of Regulations).
The key indicator for the division of regions into objectives is the Gross National Product per capita (GNP p.c.). This criterion is criticised on the ground that it does not reflect the socio-economic reality of regions. Some groups (e.g.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “European Structural and Investment Funds” as financial funds of the European Commission for the social, economic and territorial cohesion of the European Union. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q846996. VIAF identifies the subject as 315180315. Authority coordinates are 50.842, 4.365. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2021 and 2027.
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This entry incorporates text from “European Structural and Investment Funds” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.