By Anne-France White - 4th December 2006
A deal has been struck on the EU globalisation fund, paving the way for implementationin early 2007.
EU ministers agreed on the fund during December 4 talks with the European commission and parliament – the decision must now officially be ratified by the council, representing member states.
The €500m globalisation fund will be earmarked for workers made redundant because of pressures due to globalisation.
It is to be financed through under-spending in other EU areas.
The fund, first tabled in March, was initially rejected by several member states who saw it as a protectionist scheme.
But it eventually won support as a signal that the EU is ready to assist citizens in difficult situations.
Crucially, the fund will go to individual workers, not to companies or local authorities.
The money will go to helping people look for jobs, retrain or set up their own companies.
But there has been some debate as to which redundancies should be covered by the fund.
Volkswagen’s recent announcement that it will cut 3500 jobs at its Brussels plant has triggered calls for the new globalisation fund to apply to the Belgian redundancies.
So far, however, the commission has insisted that the new fund is designed only to deal with problems caused directly by globalisation.
In the VW case, the jobs are being relocated to the carmaker’s German factories – leading the commission to argue that the existing European social fund would be a more appropriate instrument to support the workers.
“I think that the globalisation fund could be a very good instrument in helping the region in this difficult situation,” Luc Van den Brande, first vice-president of the Committee of the Regions and a Belgian senator, countered in a speech on December 4.
“We are concerned about the idea of the European commission that foresees the fund only in cases when ‘world trade’ patterns are in play,” he argued.
“The restructuring of many regions is a response to the changing world economy, to globalisation,” he said.
“Companies that move to other countries within the EU are also responding to globalisation and the regions in question should be able to get the EU support for this.”
The CoR also says the EU should earmark €1bn instead of the planned €500m.
“€500m on an annual basis is not enough to ease the effects of globalisation in the regions,” Van den Brande argued.
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