This is a Call for proposals for EU grants tackling Long-Term Unemployment under the European Social Fund+ (ESF+) Social Innovation+ (SI+) initiative. The aim of this Call is to transfer or scale up proven and promising social innovations aimed at the integration of the long-term unemployed into the labour market and fostering their social inclusion.

With an indicative grant budget of 23 million EUR, the transnational projects should focus on:

• cooperation with local employment stakeholders and partnerships between local employers and communities,
• improving the outreach of long-term unemployed people, including those facing the most barriers,
• providing an individualised, accessible, and inclusive approach to long-term unemployed people.

Duration: the expected duration of a project is 36 months.

Grant amount: the estimated size of a grant is between EUR 1 000 000 and EUR 3 000 000 per project (but this does not preclude the submission/selection of applications requesting other amounts), constituting no more than 80% of the total project budget. A co-financing of at least 20% must thus come from other sources than the EU budget.

Who can apply: only consortia are eligible.

To be considered eligible, a cosortium must consist of at least two legal eligible entities representing two different eligible countries, as follows: EU Member States; countries associated to the ESF+ (Iceland, Montenegro, Norway and Serbia). Among these entities at least one legal entity must demonstrate a proven track record of experience in the field of long-term unemployment. An entity may only participate as the coordinator in one consortium.