SURE: EU support to national short-term working schemes and its openness to non-standard workers
| Published date | 01 March 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13882627231170856 |
| Date | 01 March 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
SURE: EU support to national
short-term working schemes
and its openness to
non-standard workers
Panayiotis Elia
Policy Advisor on Pension & Financial Affairs, European Association of Paritarian
Institutions (AEIP), Belgium
Sonja Bekker
Law Department, Utrecht University, the Netherlands
Abstract
In response to the labour market effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the European Union (EU)
implemented ‘Temporary Support to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency’(SURE).
This instrument enables loans to be made under favourable conditions from the EU to affected
Member States, covering part of their costs for national short-time work (STW) schemes or simi-
lar policies. In essence, STW prevents unemployment by helping employers to temporarily reduce
the working hours of their personnel, while providing these employees with income support from
the state for the hours not worked. During the COVID-19 crisis, non-standard workers in par-
ticular experienced job loss or a reduction of working hours, while often having inadequate access
to social security. This article assesses the inclusiveness of SURE in terms of providing, via national
STW, support to all workers. Firstly, it explores the options provided by the SURE Regulation to
finance STW schemes which also cover non-standard workers. Secondly, it gives an EU-wide over-
view of which schemes and which types of workers have been supported. Thirdly, the paper ana-
lyses in detail how three Member States –Belgium, Cyprus and Poland –have used SURE to
support non-standard and self-employed workers. The article adds to the currently scarce ana-
lyses on how SURE is used by countries with various STW systems. Moreover, it shows whether
SURE may fit the growing EU focus on providing access to social security for all types of workers
irrespective of their employment relationship, as for instance codified in the EU Pillar of Social
Rights.
Corresponding author:
Sonja Bekker, Law Department, Utrecht University, Newtonlaan 201, Utrecht 3584 BH, The Netherlands.
Email: s.bekker@uu.nl
Article
European Journal of Social Security
2023, Vol. 25(1) 41–59
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/13882627231170856
journals.sagepub.com/home/ejs
Keywords
SURE, social protection, non-standard employment, EU, short-time work
Introduction
The COVID-19 outbreak has had a severe impact on working hours and earnings across the globe
(ILO, 2020). Yet, the pandemic affected Member States and workers unequally, highlighting eco-
nomic divergences between Member States, differences according to employment status, and
inequalities between women and men (Vanhercke et al., 2021: 158). In particular, workers on non-
standard contracts (temporary and self-employed workers) have been affected by the labour market
shocks, as well as women, foreigners, workers in microenterprises and those who are underpaid and
poorly educated (Pouliakas and Branka, 2020: 30). Ideally, workers who have lost their job are
covered by income replacement schemes such as unemployment benefits (UB). In the first months
of the pandemic, most EU countries used existing social protection schemes and introduced new mea-
sures to give additional economic and social support (Ebbinghaus and Lehner, 2022); for instance, they
relaxed the eligibility conditions of the social security schemes, or upgraded the benefits (Spasova et al.,
2021). Many governments broadened the scope of income replacement through the introduction of
ad-hoc liquidity support packages, for example supporting the income of self-employed workers
(Schoukens and Weber, 2020: 4). Still, not all types of workers benefit equally from income support.
In particular, workers in the most precarious forms of employment face gaps in social protection
(Spasova et al., 2021). Also, protective measures offered by short-time work (STW) schemes have
not always been accessible to freelancers, self-employed workers, and workers on temporary contracts,
exposing them more to the risk of economic shocks (Eurofound, 2020a).
At European level, the European Commission has contributed to mitigating the effects of the
pandemic on the labour market, through, among other measures, the temporary instrument
SURE, which aims to help protect jobs and workers (European Commission, 2020a). On 2 April
2020, the Commission published SURE, and already in May 2020 the Council adopted the pro-
posal. SURE has provided a total of 98.4 billion EUR, and has given loans to 19 Member
States
1
to cover unexpected and severe increases in the actual and planned public expenditure on
STW schemes. Such schemes provide subsidies for temporary reductions in the number of
working hours in organisations affected by temporary shocks. The rationale is that such schemes
give employers who suffer temporary drops in demand or production a means to reduce their
employees’working hours, instead of making them redundant. The workers receive income
support to mitigate the financial consequences of the loss of working hours. To finance the loans
to Member States, the Commission borrowed on financial markets and then provided credit to
Member States on favourable conditions. SURE ran until 31 December 2022. It is seen as signifi-
cant not only due to its financial support to Member States, but also because of its nature as a supra-
national instrument (Corti and Crespy, 2020: 2). It could even be a step towards a European
unemployment benefit reinsurance scheme, and thus potentially deepen the EU social project
(Anderson and Heins, 2021: 23; Andor, 2020; Béland et al., 2021; Corti et al., 2023).
1. Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland,
Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain.
42 European Journal of Social Security 25(1)
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