Social Innovation+ Initiative · Transcript · · Updated
Social Innovation Forum 2026 – Day 1 | 7 October 2026, Brussels – Transcript
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Summary
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- Catalin Gearon noted that the European Commission has adopted an ambitious anti-poverty strategy in May.
- Rosa Martinez announced that Spain published a law reforming disability and dependency legislation, authorizing a permanent national competent center for social innovation.
- Professor Jürgen Howaldt emphasized that civilizations are not simply driven by technological innovation and that some of humanity's greatest advances occurred in social innovation.
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Transcript
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Good morning. Good morning, everyone. Please sit down. Please find a seat. It's a full house. Great to see that. Good morning and welcome to Brussels. Welcome to the fourth edition of the Social Innovation Forum.
It's wonderful to see you all again, some of you for the first time. Glad you're all here with us today and tomorrow. Because there's a real energy, of course, in gathering here with so many people and once more with such a remarkable community. People who day in, day out push social innovation forward across Europe. And in this room, of course, we
have representatives from managing authorities, implementing bodies. We have representatives from people working underground daily with social innovation, intermediate bodies, NGOs, European Commission, of course, and many others whose work makes this field into this field and very well interesting field that you're all
working in today. So, whatever corner of Europe you've traveled from on behalf of the European Competence Center for Social Innovation and behalf of the European Commission, I want to say genuine thank you for being here today and tomorrow. It's because of your presence, your experience, your perspectives, your questions also, that this forum becomes more than just a conference.
It's a space for real collaboration, for exchanging knowledge, and for finding inspiration in each other's work. And I can already promise you that this year's forum is going to be the most interactive forum so far with more breakout sessions, more workshops, more panel discussions than ever before.
And also this year our spirit of exchange has a clear focus. Our theme is advocating for social innovation building a common voice through impact evidence. And I can't wait to see where that conversation leads us over the next few days. So we want to explore how advocacy can be reinforced through stronger evidence, more strategic communication of impact
and closer alignment between practice and policy. So particular attention will be given to how social impact measurement and evaluation can support advocacy, helping to demonstrate of course the added value of social innovation as a key component of policy making and public investment. Now let us highlight maybe for a second the goals of the event as they are mentioned on
the slide here. We want to showcase and exchange successful social innovations, explore how successful social innovations can be scaled and sustained. And we want to strengthen the role and influence of social innovation in policy making by promoting evidence-based advocacy. So that is our focus today and tomorrow.
And here's the agenda of the day. You don't have to take notes because you will find it on your badges as well. The welcome speeches, we will start with that. Then we will hear a voice to impact about child participation as a driver for social innovation. The high-level keynotes, a panel discussion right before the coffee break, then we have the breakout sessions in groups. After that lunch will be served, then you will have the possibility to meet the social
innovators. There's an another coffee break. Then we will we will get insights into the European Competence Center for social innovation, a fireside chat very interesting, and the networking dinner will start at 7:00 this evening.
A few practical matters, maybe, regarding the event. So, please check your badges to see the QR codes to get access to the full event agenda as it appeared on the screen here and all the practical information. So, your assignments for the breakout sessions on day one, the SIM project sessions on day one and the workshops the workshops on day two
tomorrow also listed all on your participants badge. The Wi-Fi password is on your badge and also please keep in mind that with us here we also have fantastic team. If you have any questions, look for the team members wearing badges clearly marked with support in red and they will be happy to help you anytime and answer any question you may have.
Also, I would like to encourage you to share your impressions during the forum on social media using using the hashtag the event hashtag SIF SIF 2026.
So, it's time to start. Are you ready? I think you are. Please join me in welcoming our keynote speaker from the European Commission, someone who is committed really to advancing skills, social rights and inclusion, Catalin Gearon, member of the cabinet of the executive vice president for social rights and skills, quality jobs and preparedness at the European Commission and Catalin will
officially open our event and set the scene for today's discussion. Catalin. >> Thank you. >> >> Good morning.
Um I think my lovely colleagues here in DG Employment gave me the easiest tasks of all, speak for like 10 minutes and uh prepare everybody for a nice conference. Really not a difficult task at all. And do it without coffee in the morning, so uh that makes it a bit more complicated.
Jokes aside, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Social Innovation Forum 2026. I will start by conveying Sorry. By conveying the warm greetings of the Executive Vice President together with her wishes for a very successful forum. Unfortunately, she cannot be here with us today as she was last year as she is attending the European Parliament plenary session in Strasbourg.
The Executive Vice President attaches great importance to social innovation because it is ultimately about something very concrete. Finding better ways to respond to people's needs and turning our European ambitions into solutions that make a difference in people's lives.
And this is why it is particularly encouraging to see you all here today. Let me warmly warmly welcome our keynote speakers, Professor Hovaldt, Director of the Social Research Center at Dortmund University, um Rosa Martinez, the State Secretary for Social Rights in Spain, as well as Dr.
Laura Gigliotti Ciana, the Director of ESF. And let me thank you thank all of you. Um people working every day to develop and deliver innovative solutions. You are the people who turn social innovation from an idea into practice.
This year's theme, that I will not repeat because it was already presented in the introductory remarks, could therefore not be timelier because social innovation is not innovation for its own sake. It is about finding new approaches to difficult social challenges.
It is about listening to people and communities, testing new solutions, learning from what works, and then asking ourselves a crucial question. How do we take a solution that works for some people and make it work for many more?
That question is particularly important today. Europe faces profound structural challenges from the demographic change to labor market transformation driven by digitalization and AI, and the social consequences of of the climate transition.
These challenges are interconnected, and they are experienced not in policy documents, but in our daily lives. Our response, therefore, needs to be both ambitious and practical.
First, the fight against poverty remains a high priority. In May, the Commission has adopted an ambitious anti-poverty strategy. But strategies alone do not change people's lives. We need to know how to translate these ambitions into solutions that work on the ground.
This is where social innovation can make a real contribution. As part of this anti-poverty strategy, the Commission has launched a social innovation called supporting the implementation of the European Child Guarantee. It gives us an opportunity to test how better coordination between authorities and stakeholders can strengthen children's access to essential services, and more importantly, to learn from this experience so that successful approaches
can inform policy more broadly. The same principle applies to another of Europe's priorities, which is competitiveness. Europe needs to strengthen its competitiveness while ensuring fairness and inclusion.
We need to invest in strategic growing sectors, address persistent skills gaps, shortages, and support workers through the profound changes taking place in our economies. And this is the rational between behind the skills guarantee and its pilot that we also supported last year. We are testing practical mechanism that accelerate job-to-job transition, particularly for workers in companies in
sectors in decline, helping them move towards strategic and growing sectors without falling into unemployment. The mechanism we test will provide evidence for the delivery model of a future fully-fledged skills guarantee, which is set to be implemented under the next multi-annual financial framework 2028-2034.
Again, the principle is simple. We test, we learn, we build the evidence, and when something works, we scale it. And this for me, for us, is one of the most important contributions that social innovation can make to European policy making.