EU redundancies fund changes favour Malta

Amendments approved yesterday by the Employment Committee of the European Parliament to legislation setting up a new EU fund to help jobless people find work have taken into account the needs of small economies and will now also benefit Maltese workers.

Sources close to the committee told The Times that Malta, together with some other member states, had been lobbying MEPs over the past months in order to introduce changes to the rules of the fund and thus broaden its scope. This has now been achieved through various amendments to the original draft proposal suggested by the Commission.

To be known officially as the European Globalisation Fund (EGF), the programme will be providing up to €500 million each year to help reintegrate into the labour market workers made redundant due to changes in global trade patterns.

Plans for the setting up of this fund were tabled by the Commission earlier this year. However, the rules governing the eligibility of member states were not favourable to Malta. According to the Commission's proposed rules, member states would only become eligible if the number of redundancies in a given company amounts to a minimum of 1,000 workers. This would have excluded Malta as only a handful of companies in Malta employ 1,000 workers. The island openly criticised the Commission's suggestions and demanded changes.

According to the new changes, MEPs halved the threshold for eligibility from 1,000 workers to 500 and introduced other significant changes to benefit small economies.

A committee spokesman said MEPs wanted to guarantee that more workers would be supported via the EGF. In general, Parliament agrees with the Commission that assistance should be concentrated on workers made redundant in areas most adversely affected by economic dislocation due to changes in world trade patterns, but they also wanted to broaden the intervention criteria.

According to the new amended proposal, the EGF will become available to member states when at least 500 workers are concerned and there is a serious impact on employment and the local economy, or when during a period of 12 months at least 1,000 workers lose their jobs in one or more companies in a particular region.

The fund will become eligible as soon as the legislation process is over and the new regulation enters into force.

The Finnish EU presidency has already said it would like to adopt a common position on this fund by the beginning of December.

The first reading vote in Parliament is planned to be taken at November's session in Strasbourg.