Cinzia Del Rio in a Flash

Interview of Mme Cinzia Del Rio, EESC Member, on the ‘’Emergency measures to support employment and income during the pandemic crisis’’.

‘’It was important to support jobs, to support skills, not to lose skills in this period and to support enterprises. It is social bonds which were allocated in order to cover the costs of unemployment and income support for families. We are talking of 32 million workers which have been helped with the SURE plan. We are talking about 2.5 million enterprises, which could be supported by this measure.’’

What does the EESC recommend to support the recovery?

‘’The European Economic and Social Committee recommends to set up an Observatory because we need to collect more data on the different enterprises, on the different categories of workers which could benefit from the SURE plan. The second thing is to stabilise this instrument. We ask, as the EESC, to stabilise the financial instrument. Then we ask to open a public debate by the Commission on the proposal to set up a permanent unemployment insurance scheme at European level.’’

What is the EESC's priority for employment?

The priority for the Economic and Social Committee is to combine the different emergency measures not only linked to the labour market, but also for the recovery, for the economic support, to merge and to combine these measures with recovery plans at national level, with the use of Next Generation EU. This is essential, not only to have national plans, but to look at European strategic plans of recovery.