Authors: Elodie Makhoul Research Assistant SWINS, & ALL Institute, and Prof. Delia Ferri, Professor of Law and Co-Director of ALL Institute, both at the School of Law and Criminology, Maynooth University.
On 15 and 16 October 2026, the Horizon Europe funded project on Sustainable Wellbeing through Investment in Social Services (SWINS) held its 3rd in person consortium meeting in Maynooth University.
Started in February 2025 and ending in January 2028, the SWINS project is carried out by an international consortium led by Universitá di Firenze – PIN Arco (Florence, Italy), and besides Maynooth, includes partners from Belgium, Spain, Italy, Norway, Serbia, Hungary and Germany. SWINS aims to evaluate the return on social services investments and impact on economic and social wellbeing. Specifically, it assesses how various social services influence income, employment and growth across the life course. The research includes analysing both macro- and micro-level impacts using advanced tools like EUROMOD (a tax-benefit microsimulation model) and machine learning, and investigating legal and policy aspects of social services to create a policy-oriented toolbox for EU and national policymakers. The project, informed by a rights perspective, seeks to highlight social services as drivers of sustainable wellbeing in the EU, moving beyond their traditional role as safety nets. In that regard, the project, which is associated with the ALL Institute, strongly contributes to the institute’s mission to developing person-centred systems and foster a human-rights based approach to social inclusion.
By influencing policy-making and advocacy processes at various levels, SWINS engages and concerns a wide range of target groups, including EU/national/local policymakers, journalists, social rights lobbyists and stakeholders, the scientific community, and the general public.
After having hosted a launch event, covered earlier in this blog, Maynooth University, as key legal partner of the consortium, hosted the third consortium meeting, which aimed to take stock of the progress made a year and a half into the project, share updates between partners and provide a space to encourage exchange, discussion and collaboration across the various tasks of the project.
The meeting started on a high note with a brilliant keynote speech from Professor Juan Jorge Piernas Lopez (University of Murcia and Member of the SWINS Advisory Board). Prof. Piernas Lopez’s keynote titled ‘State aid: Jack of all trades, master of none’ engaged with role of State aid in contemporary Europe. Prof. Piernas Lopez discussed current trends in the compatibility analysis of aid carried out by the Commission, and its implications in relation to social and green investments. He also highlighted the structural and economic asymmetries caused by large use of State aid within the internal market, where ‘richer’ Member States have major financial capacity to subsidize their domestic industries than smaller or ‘poorer’ states. His presentation deepened and problematised some of the key legal findings of the project, showing how subsidies cluster in important sectors like energy transition and green tech while supporting sustainable wellbeing, might also lead to market distortions across borders.
The Maynooth University team, composed of Prof. Delia Ferri, Dr. Charles O’Sullivan and Ms Elodie Makhoul, discussed their legal mapping deliverable which investigated the conception of social services within EU law, the scope of EU law in the context of national intervention of social services, and the extent to which the EU legal framework might create normative questions or ambiguities that affect national investment. This contribution identified three main ways through which EU law impacts on national investment in social services. First, EU law frames and orientates social services through EU policies; secondly, it shapes, but also constrains, the provision and delivery of social services through funding mechanisms and regulatory frameworks such as State aid rules, public procurement legislation and other mechanisms. Finally, it enables and transforms social services and investment within the Union through free movement law.
Two roundtables were organised, with the first one highlighting the project’s investigation on the impact of digital transformation on social services, specifically public employment services and social security benefits through the presentation of scenarios and models on lifelong learning skills job demand and care-gender and time. This specifically brought to light the conditions and dynamics that can influence autonomy, care, learning and wellbeing. Another roundtable opened the floor the prospective SWINS impact, its policy recommendations and how to best embed findings in EU legal and policy infrastructures. Several insightful workshops highlighted SWINS various facets of the economic analysis on micro-macro economic returns, social returns and sustainability. The roundtable’s core idea explored how social investment and the use of resources to provide appropriate services (macro-level changes) can generate changes in opportunities and behaviours (micro-level change) which in turn can foster income and employment yet at the same time also foster social services system’s effectiveness and sustainability. Some of the findings at the center of this event are already available here.
Overall, this meeting took stock of the research progress, establishing further how investing in different domains such as care, health, labour market, and education positions human and social capital at the heart of Europe’s competitiveness and sustainable transition strategies.
In the forthcoming months, all SWINS partners will focus not only on the completion of the main research milestones, but also on dissemination and new outputs. Maynooth team’s work will focus on the policy toolbox of the project to maximise the impact of the project across various outputs. At critical juncture for the European Union amidst a polycrisis and heightened discussion of next EU budget, the hope is that findings from the project will contribute to shape a fairer, more inclusive and sustainable EU.
