Member States are considering setting 31 December 2022 as the expiry date for the European instrument for temporary Support to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency (SURE), according to compromise amendments proposed by the Croatian EU Council Presidency and obtained by EUROPE on Wednesday 22 April.
Even though this interim document, which is dated 16 April, is provisional, we are told that this sunset clause would seem to have consensus among national delegations.
It should be noted that the Presidency compromises specify that the EU Council, acting on a proposal from the European Commission, may extend the period of the instrument by six months. However, according to the Presidency text, the six-month period, put in quotation marks, would still be under discussion.
The other major change, which echoes the Dutch requests (see EUROPE 12465/2), is the extension of the scope of the Regulation to health-related measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. If financial assistance is allocated to health-related measures, the Member State applying for financial assistance must provide evidence of actual or anticipated expenditure on health-related measures. However, the text specifies that the instrument is intended to “mainly” support national schemes for partial unemployment or similar measures.
As regards the guarantees to be given to the instrument, Member States ask the Commission, before calling on the guarantees provided by the Member States, to draw on the margin available under the own resources ceiling for payment appropriations, taking into account “the Union's total contingent liabilities”.
This Presidency compromise proposal was discussed at the meeting of the Working Party of Financial Counsellors on 21 April 2020. The text may have been changed since then. EUROPE will continue to follow this story. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens and Marion Fontana)