The European Council adopted on June 11th 2009 at the Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council meeting , a revised regulation on the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund (EGF) as one of the measures to tackle economic crisis.

The decision adopted by the the Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council meeting follows a first reading agreement with the European Parliament on the proposal made by the Commission on December 2008 to improve EGF in order to help those citizens who lost their jobs as a result of economic crisis. The main objective of the new regulation is to enable the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund (EGF) to make earlier interventions in favour of workers made redundant as a result of globalisation as well as to improve the attractiveness of the fund and to strengthen the solidarity in the context of the current economic and financial crisis.

New measures on European Globalisation Adjustment Fund

• The trigger number for interventions of the fund is reduced from 1000 to 500 redundancies.
• The period for the use of financial contributions from the fund is prolonged from 12 to 24 months.
• The scope of the EGF is temporarily broadened by providing support also to workers who have lost their jobs as a direct result of the current crisis; in addition, the co-financing rate for these cases is increased to 65%, compared to the usual co-financing rate which remains 50%; in order to benefit from this derogation, the applications must be submitted before 31 December 2011.

The new rules, which form a part of the European Economic Recovery Plan, will apply retroactively to all applications for assistance from the EGF received from May 1st 2009.