SOCIEUX+ EU Expertise in Social Protection, Labour and Employment is a European Commission technical assistance facility aimed to support partner countries and institutions to better design, manage and monitor inclusive, effective, and sustainable employment policies and social protection systems. SOCIEUX+ is the extension (2017-2020) of SOCIEUX EU Expertise in Social Protection, which started operations in January 2014.

SOCIEUX+ provides support in all social protection and employment areas, specifically:

• Main social services, i.e. education, healthcare and employment;

• Social assistance, i.e. cash transfer programmes, social pensions and other old age benefits, child and the disabled support grants, public works, employment guarantee schemes;

• Social insurance, i.e. contributory pensions, health, accident, unemployment protection.

SOCIEUX+ actions may range from exclusively structural issues, such as addressing structural/institutional shortcomings in the beneficiary institutions, to interventions that aim at ad-hoc transfer of know-how and expertise to strengthen existing capacities or respond to very specific needs. More precisely, SOCIEUX+ covers the following horizontal areas of social protection:

• Design of policy and strategy;

• Finance and budgeting (management of financial systems and mechanisms of financial reports);

• Monitoring and evaluation, statistical analyses;

• PR and Communication (external and internal);

• Information technologies;

• Human resource management.

SOCIEUX+ targets central governments, ministries, legislative councils and regional governments, mandated bodies, other institutions responsible for the implementation or provision of social protection. However, other stakeholders, such as civil society organisations, international donors, etc., can be involved in the implementation of SOCIEUX + Actions as well. The experts mobilised by SOCIEUX+ provide technical assistance from preparation to post-delivery follow-up of actions. The provided support can consist of up to 6 activities with the duration of 1-2 weeks each.

In practice, SOCIEUX+ activities may take such different forms as

• institutional assessments;

• support in drafting legislation and strategies;

• screening and reviews of strategic documents and programmes;

• seminars, roundtable discussions;

• direct and peer to peer approaches;

• workshops: technical trainings, train the trainer, training needs analysis;

• study visits.

PAO is the national coordinator of SOCIEUX+ in Armenia. Proposals for SOCIEUX+ support drafted by Armenian beneficiary institutions should be sent to PAO for further evaluation. After PAO approval, the SOCIEUX+ team fine-tunes the requests in collaboration with the requesting government authorities and the local EU Delegation. The final assessment of the proposals is done by the European Commission who evaluates and approves the request on the basis of its relevance, feasibility, effectiveness and sustainability.

SOCIEUX+ projects implemented in Armenia:

Sharing best international practice on human rights approach to disability assessment and eligibility determination

More information

SOCIEUX Guide for Partner Country Institutions

SOCIEUX Request Form for Partner Country Institutions