Project organization is used extensively to promote creativity, innovation and responsiveness to local context, but can lead to precarious employment. This paper compares European Social Fund (ESF)-supported projects supporting ‘active inclusion’ of disadvantaged clients in Slovenia and France. Despite many similarities between the two social protection fields in task, temporality, teams and socio-economic context, the projects had different dynamics with important implications for workers. In Slovenia project dynamics have been precarious, leading to insecure jobs and reduced status for front-line staff; in France, by contrast, projects and employment have been relatively stable. Our explanation highlights the transaction, more specifically, the capacity of government agencies to function as intermediaries managing the transactions through which ESF money is disbursed to organizations providing services. We find that transnational pressures on the state affect its capacity as a transaction organizer to stabilize the organizational field. In Slovenia, transnational pressures associated with austerity and European Union integration have stripped away this capacity more radically than in France, leading to precarious project dynamics and risk shifting onto project workers.