The European Union and local social innovation
In this article, Sebastiano Sabato (researcher at the European Social Observatory, OSE) and Gert Verschraegen (Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Antwerp) explore the European Union framework for social innovation, i.e. the role of the EU in promoting and supporting local socially innovative initiatives.
The gradual development of an EU framework for social innovation
Social innovation is considered a key tool for achieving the objective of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth envisaged by the Europe 2020 Strategy. Against this backdrop, research carried out within the ImPRovE project has investigated how social innovation made its way onto the European Union agenda and which kinds of instruments and resources the EU has made available in order to promote and support it. The analysis concerns the period 2006-2014 and it mainly focuses on social innovation in the field of poverty and social exclusion.
