EMPLOYMENT : MEPS BACK COMPROMISE ON GLOBALISATION ADJUSTMENT FUND.

The EU will continue to support a professional reintegration programme for workers who lost their jobs in 2013. Following approval by the Committee of Permanent Representatives (Coreper) in mid-October, the European Parliament's Committee on Employment and Social Affairs (EMPL) backed the compromise, on 6 November, which extended the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund (EGF) until 2020. The document introduces two main changes in relation to the current programming period: it extends the scope of the regulation to include young unemployed and self-employed people and also sets the co-financing rate at 60%.

The EGF's original aim was to help workers made redundant as a result of major structural changes in world trade patterns due to globalisation. Created by Regulation No 1927/2006, it was amended by Regulation No 546/2009 to include workers who were laid off as a result of the crisis, to lower the threshold of the EGF's support for redundancies (500 laid off employees compared to 1,000 initially) and to bump up the co-financing rates to 65% (compared to the 50% previously). In 2011, the European Commission submitted a proposal for a regulation, which established new arrangements for the fund during the period 2014-2020. Since then, the three institutions have been involved in a fierce debate: in Council, a number of countries - led by Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and Sweden - were firmly opposed to the fund's future development. These countries simply felt that the EGF was "inefficient". In Parliament, most MEPs backed the continued use of this instrument. However, they did call for improvements to be made.

In the end, a middle ground was found. It was decided that the funds will certainly be kept for large-scale redundancies (a minimum of 500), but it will no longer be limited to workers who were fired as a result of globalisation or the crisis. From now on, the funds will also be made available to a new category of workers, such as employees on fixed-term contracts, temporary workers and self-employed people. At Germany's request, people under 25 from regions affected by...

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