On Tuesday, the European Commission transferred to Spain a second tranche of €4 billion from the European fund to counter unemployment. This is used to finance temporary layoffs and the compensation for self-employed workers who ceased activity during the pandemic.
With this second payment, Spain has already received 10 billion euros via the SURE instrument out of the total 21.3 billion Pedro Sánchez’s government requested and was later approved by the European institutions.
The Community Executive has disbursed in this second round a total of 14 billion euros to nine European countries. In addition to Spain, Italy (6.5 billion), Greece (2 billion), Croatia (510 million), Lithuania (300 million), Cyprus (250 million), Slovenia (200 million) and Malta and Latvia (120 million each) have received tranches from this fund.
The SURE instrument has a budget of 100 billion euros and aims to help Member States deploy programmes to prevent mass layoffs during the coronavirus pandemic, such as the Spanish ERTEs.
For the moment, 18 Community partners have requested 90.3 billion euros from this fund, so there is still a little under 10 billion to be allocated.
The European Commission already released 17 billion euros to Spain, Italy and Portugal at the end of October. The second round has taken place after Brussels raised 14 billion euros through a new issue of social bonds which it is using to finance the programme.
