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Support for European Trade Union Projects (SETUP)

What is SETUP?

SETUP (Support for European Trade Union Projects) is the specialised service provided by ETUI and accessible to ETUC affiliates to support work on European funding for trade union activities.

The service, set up in 1994, initially concerned a relatively new field for trade union organisations, namely the strategic use of European funds to strengthen a trade union strategy, and to increase cooperation and exchange in trade union activities.

Today, SETUP is a strategic tool, a combination of on-line and off-line elements, which offers information, training and assistance to trade union officers in fields relating to their trade union activity, such as lifelong learning, industrial relations, socio-economic research, migration, globalisation, sustainable development, equal opportunities, working conditions and non-discrimination. SETUP is also aimed at the trade union stakeholders of the EU candidate countries and of the Pan-European Regional Council (PERC) countries of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

SETUP offers:

Information

a list of open calls for proposals and tenders;
an information letter, SETUP News, which notifies its readers of European Union calls for proposals as soon as they are published;
links to useful websites, including newsletters and information centres at European level.

Training

Every year, SETUP organises transnational project management training courses, for which new methodologies have been developed offering trade union leaders recognised skills. In 2010, the participants in the “project management” course earned an accreditation officially recognised by the British TUC and National Open College Network. This experiment will continue within the context of the new European Qualifications Framework.

SETUP also organises training courses on the European Social Fund and on European grants for health and safety at work and for social dialogue, in cooperation with the ETUC and the European Commission.

The training activities are backed up by several handbooks and guides designed to help trade union members to devise and manage European projects. The handbooks can be downloaded free from our Publications/Guides page.

Assistance

SETUP organises 'Information Days' for the national confederations and the European trade union federations. These days are dedicated to European funding, the use of European projects as a strategic tool and the management of transnational projects.

Individual advice on seeking partners, choosing a type of funding and submitting funding applications is provided by contacting Silvana Pennella who is responsible of the Service.

In addition, a ' projects corner' allows anyone interested to look up and exchange information on line about existing trade union projects.

News

New SETUP leaflet

11 April 2012

Our new leaflet presenting SETUP training in project work and project management is available.

Development of training for project management

4 November 2011

ETUI, together with ETUC and a core group of affiliates, tutors and experts, has been working to produce a certified three-level training programme designed to address trade union project needs at regional, national and European levels. The programme has been presented in the last ETUI Education Conference, October 2011

Accreditation for ETUI courses

29 August 2011

For some time the Education department of the ETUI has been considering different options for accreditation, examining different models used across member states. In 2010, in close cooperation with the British Trades Union Congress (TUC), a pilot project was launched to grant official recognition to the permanent ETUI course on 'Project management for trade union officers'.