In recent years, the European Social Fund has provided a substantial crisis response. Nevertheless, by end of 2021, implementation has continued at a stable pace and the fund’s achievements have also increased. The challenge will be committing the additional resources, in particular REACT-EU budget and ensuring that end-beneficiaries are reached. Following the anti-COVID response, in particular the substantial additional funding from REACT EU, ESF programmes now amount to EUR 142.9 billion (EU + national share), of which 104.8 billion is financed by the European Union. The Youth Employment Initiative (YEI) amounts to a further 4.5 billion euros. This means an increase of 16.9 billion altogether compared to the initial funding. The strengthened capacity to combat the crisis also required a substantial review of the operational programmes, including shifting budgets, applying new flexibility for co-financing rates and introducing additional output and result indicators and targets. Thanks to the uptake by MS of the indicators recommended by COM services to monitor the anti-COVID response, the outcomes will be fully visible in the next ESF synthesis report. At the same time, Member States are further adapting their programmes by using the new crisis-response initiatives, namely, to respond to the influx of refugees due to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and the huge increase of households’ energy costs. By the end of 2021, implementation advanced steadily. The share of declared expenditure against the allocated budgets has increased and already reached an average of 63 %. However, with only two years left to declare the remaining expenditure and considering the increased budget allocations that have been provided since 2020, most programmes will need to considerably increase their spending during the last two years of implementation. Member States currently report a total of 55.2 million participations across the various ESF/YEI interventions, including those supported by REACT-EU top-ups. While COVID-19 had clear impacts on the programming and priorities of ESF/YEI programmes, so far there are no clear indications that it had a negative impact on the actual implementation, according to numbers of participations and shares of costs reported by Managing Authorities. Overall, participants benefitting from ESF/YEI measures have different backgrounds, but most participants were unemployed (36%) or inactive (38%) and 44% of them were below 25 years old. Among the groups with different educational background, ESF targeted the most the low-skilled who made up 47% of the participants. The increase in participation in the Youth Employment Initiative has slowed down as YEI programmes are getting closer to their targets (median target achievement rate: 96%). Overall, until the end of 2021, the substantial numbers of participation reached with ESF and YEI helped 6.4 million participants find a job, while another 8.8 million participants gained a qualification, 1.3 million are engaged in job-searching and 2.6 million are in education / training. Additionally, a total of 5.9 million disadvantaged participants achieved one of these positive results.