Brussels, 30/05/2008 (Agence Europe) - Following the approval of the budgetary authority (European Parliament and Council ) on 10 April (EUROPE 9640), the European Commission on Thursday 29 May granted Portugal and Malta subsidies from the European Globalisation Fund (EGF), to assist workers who have been made redundant. The total amount will be €3.1 million: €2.4 million to help 1549 Portuguese workers in the automotive sector to find a new job, and €681,000 for 675 workers in the Maltese textiles sector.
It is worth noting that the Portuguese request relates to 1549 redundancies in three companies: (1) Alcoa Fujikura (Lisbon region), a manufacturer of electronic components; (2) Opel Portugal (Alentejo region), a lorry assembly factory; (3) Johnson Controls (Alentejo region), a manufacturer of car seat fabrics. The decision to close these factories can be put down to the fact that, on the world automotive market, most of the regions experiencing the fastest growth rates are currently outside Europe (for more details, see EUROPE 9591). Malta brought its application after two textile manufacturing companies - VF and Bortex - decided to terminate all or part of their activities in the country. The Maltese application was tabled under the "reduced-sized employment market" category, which permits aid under the EGF even when the threshold of 1000 redundancies has not been met (for details, see EUROPE 9565).
A Commission press release indicates that to date, six applications have been approved and have given rise to EGF payments of a total of €21.7 million. The previous dossiers related to redundancies in the French automotive industry (Peugeot-Citroën/PSA, and Renault- see EUROPE 9519/9469/9454/9350), and in the German (BEN Q) and Finnish (Perlos) telephony sectors - see EUROPE 9570/9511. The Commission is currently examining five further applications, four from Italy and one from Spain. Info: http: //ec.europa.eu/employment_social/egf/index_fr.html (G.B.)