In 2020, the SURE support instrument for national short-time working schemes provided assistance to almost a quarter of workers in the eighteen beneficiary Member States - approximately 21.5 million employees and 5 million self-employed workers - according to an interim report published by the European Commission on Monday 22 March on one of the three safety nets the EU has put in place to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic (see EUROPE B12679A3).
The Commission stresses that the impact of this...