On Monday 26 September, the European Commission confirmed the effectiveness of SURE, the €100 billion instrument designed to mitigate the risks of unemployment in emergency situations, with a new report published on the subject.
The national labour market measures supported by SURE protected around 1.5 million people from unemployment in 2020, the report says, among other details.
A total of €93.3 billion in financial assistance was granted to 19 Member States, of which almost €92 million has been disbursed. SURE can still provide an additional €6.2 billion in financial support to Member States by the end of 2022.
SURE supported a total of around 31.5 million people and 2.5 million businesses in 2020, and SMEs were the main beneficiaries of SURE support. The sectors that received most support were accommodation and food services, wholesale and retail trade and manufacturing.
In 2021, particularly in the first half of the year, around 9 million people and more than 800,000 businesses were supported in 13 Member States, the report says.
According to the report, half of the financial assistance was allocated by Member States to support short-time work schemes, while one third was allocated to similar measures for the self-employed; 3.2% was allocated to health-related measures, with more than one third of this amount being for workplace measures.
In addition, the absorption of SURE financial assistance was high for 17 of the 19 beneficiary Member States and technical discussions were launched where the absorption rate of funds was lower, such as in Poland.
Beyond the social and employment benefits, “Member States are estimated to have saved a total of €8.5 billion on interest payments by receiving financial assistance through SURE”, the Commission says.
For the time being, however, the Commission does not plan to extend SURE and make it a permanent tool adapted to the energy crisis, as the S&D group in the European Parliament is calling for, considering that the recent proposals on taxing the excess profits of energy companies and fossil fuel producers will partly help SMEs and poorer households.
Link to the report: https://aeur.eu/f/39a (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)