Policy Recommendations
…to improve support to social innovation in Europe
Policy recommendations to improve support to social innovation in Europe
Since the early 2010s, social innovation (SI) has been defined as new ideas that meet social needs, create social relationships, and form new collaborations. These innovations can be products, services, or models addressing unmet needs more effectively.
Through CRAFT we aim to emphasize the continued need to support SI as a set of concrete initiatives that contribute to innovative ways of doing business, strengthening communities, fostering cross-sectoral cooperation, and enhancing the sustainability and resilience of enterprises.
Yet social innovators still encounter many obstacles in their local contexts and little is known about their actual needs. The CRAFT project contributes to this effort of identifying and addressing little-known innovators’ needs. In order to strengthen the SI ecosystem in Europe, the project focuses on community building, through our digital platform for entrepreneurship support organizations (called SIMs, Social Innovation Multipliers) and SI actors (called SIAs), and capacity-building, through the co-creation of SI support tools.
The third pillar of the CRAFT project is the object of this document: policy recommendations to improve support to SI and social entrepreneurship across Europe.
To establish the recommendations, the CRAFT project has implemented specific activities allying quantitative and qualitative data analysis, and policy-level events including European experts in the area of social innovation and social entrepreneurship.
A first version of the recommendations were discussed at the second Policy Summit on June 11, 2025, and subsequently enriched. We sincerely thank our expert contributors for reviewing and commenting on the first draft, helping us refine what we aim to offer as practical and actionable levers for social innovation.
From this perspective, these recommendations could be considered as part of the 2025 mid-term review of the Social Economy Action Plan, to assess progress and help define future priorities.
This document includes:
- 21 policy recommendations pertaining to 4 categories: SI promotion, support services and categories, tools, funding and financing social innovation
- For each recommendation, concrete actions targeting relevant levels of government
- For each recommendation, a detailed description
- The sources informing these recommendations, including insights from the registrations, the policy summits, interviews, and other materials
- Summaries of the proposed actions at local, national and EU level.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions are however those of the authors only, and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.