European Social Fund Investments in the Czech Republic and Slovakia

Abstract

The paper is focused on the investments of European Social Fund as they were implemented in the period 2007 – 2012 in the Czech and Slovak Republics. The primary objective is evaluation of the success in targeting these investments into high unemployment suffering districts, secondary objectives deal with the fund beneficiaries and their distribution among the subjects of the institutional sectors of the national economy and with the thematic division of the investments. The results are somewhat ambivalent in terms of allocating the European Social Fund resources into high unemployment districts. From the available projects it is not possible to conclude that these districts are indeed more supported as opposed to the rest of them. The involvement of subjects form different institutional sectors is characterized by dominance of the central public administration which is especially pronounced in Slovakia and thematically the investments lean heavily toward social inclusion projects in both countries.