On Friday 2 June, the European Commission published its 5th six-monthly report on the implementation and impact of the SURE instrument (the European instrument providing temporary support to mitigate unemployment risks in an emergency), which was created in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic to support employment and help national short-time working schemes.
With a budget of almost €100 billion, it has supported around 31.5 million employees and self-employed workers and more than 2.5 million businesses, according to the European Commission’s press release.
A total of €98.4 billion in financial assistance under SURE has been paid out to 19 Member States (namely Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Greece, Spain, Croatia, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Latvia, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic), which is close to the maximum SURE envelope of €100 billion.
Although the instrument came to an end on 31 December 2022, the European Commission states that it still helped almost 350,000 people and more than 40,000 businesses in 2022. Most of the beneficiary Member States had phased out their emergency job retention measures by mid-2022. Only four Member States have therefore used SURE to finance measures in 2022, spending only €5 billion.
“Member States are now estimated to have saved a total of €9.0 billion in interest payments by receiving financial assistance through SURE”, the report also states.
All the Member States stated that they had verified the implementation of the measures supported by SURE, either by ex ante checks or by ex post checks including an audit (or both). And “no Member State considers SURE-supported measures to be at a high risk of irregularities or fraud”.
For the time being, the European Commission has decided not to renew this instrument.
Link to the report: https://aeur.eu/f/77y (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)