Brussels, 20/12/2007 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 20 December, the European Commission paid Germany and Finland financial support from the European Globalisation Fund (EGF, previously GAF for Globalisation Adjustment Fund). The payment of €12.8 million to Germany will help some 3,300 workers made redundant at three production sites of BenQ, a mobile phone manufacturer, to get back into work as quickly as possible. The payment of €2.03 million to Finland will aim to do the same for some 1,000 workers made redundant at Perlos, a mobile phone components manufacturer in North Karelia.
The applications from the German and Finnish authorities were made in the context of a general trend towards relocating production for mobile phones and accessories, mostly to Asia. The German application relates to redundancies in the two German subsidiaries of the Taiwanese mobile phone manufacturer BenQ in Munich (1,342 workers), Kamp-Lintfort (1,719) and Bocholt (242). In December 2006, BenQ withdrew financial support from the two companies, resulting in a total of 3,300 workers being made redundant in the three production sites. The Finnish application relates to redundancies in two Finnish production plants of Perlos, a manufacturer of mobile phone components. Some 1,000 redundancies were caused by the decision to discontinue production activities in Finland and to close down the two Perlos factories located in Joensuu and Kontiolahti, in the North Karelia region, in September 2007. So far, there have been four applications approved and paid under the Fund since its launch in January 2007. An application from Malta for textile workers was recently approved for presentation to the budgetary authority. Five further EGF applications, three from Italy, and one each from Portugal and Spain, are currently being analysed by the European Commission. Decisions on these will be taken in 2008. The EGF is an instrument for solidarity launched in 2005 by the president of the Commission, José Manuel Barroso, and Commissioner Vladimir Spidla to help workers affected by redundancy resulting from changes in global trade trends detrimental to employment. (I.L.)