We have formally endorsed the Madrid Declaration for Stronger Recognition and Funding of Social Innovation in the EU Multiannual Financial Framework 2028–2034, joining 80 other organisations from across Europe in a common advocacy effort coordinated by National Competence Centres for Social Innovation.
The Declaration was adopted on 5 May 2026 at the National Competence Centres Mutual Learning Event “Social Innovation Portfolios in Practice: Building Advocacy for Systemic Change”, held in Madrid, Spain — an event that brought together specialists in social innovation policy and practice from 19 EU Member States. The Declaration represents the most significant joint call from Europe’s social innovation ecosystem to date, with signatories spanning public authorities, research institutions, social enterprises, civil society organisations, and national competence bodies.
The European Commission is currently negotiating the next Multiannual Financial Framework — the seven-year budget that will govern EU investment from 2028 to 2034. In its current form, the proposal references social innovation only in limited ways, despite the fact that social innovation is directly relevant to nearly every major priority in the package: quality employment, social inclusion, territorial cohesion, resilience, and the green and digital transitions. The Declaration argues that this reflects a structural imbalance — one that needs to be corrected while the budget architecture is still being shaped.
The Declaration makes five concrete asks. It calls on EU institutions and Member States to:
- Recognise social innovation explicitly as a transversal delivery approach within the MFF
- Create clear and visible funding pathways within the National and Regional Partnership Plans and the EU Facility
- Preserve and strengthen dedicated ESF+ resources for social innovation, experimentation, ecosystem infrastructure and scaling
- Integrate socially innovative businesses and approaches more deliberately into competitiveness and research instruments
- Provide sustained structural support for National Competence Centres and the intermediary organisations that make social innovation effective at scale
We signed this Declaration because we believe that Europe’s most pressing challenges such as inequality, democratic fragility, the pressures of the green and digital transitions demand more than standard solutions. They demand the capacity to experiment, to learn from what works, and to build the infrastructure that allows good solutions to grow. That is what social innovation offers. And it deserves a permanent, structural place in the way Europe invests.
