The EU's SURE Instrument (cepInput)

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In order to provide financial support to Member States to help them cope with the economic consequences of the Corona pandemic, the EU has created the "SURE instrument". In concrete terms, SURE provides temporary support to reduce the risk of unemployment. A cepInput is investigating what to make of the subsidisation of corona-related national short-time work programmes.

cepInput

While the SURE instrument allows all Member States to obtain favourable EU loans to finance COVID-19-related short-time work schemes or similar measures, it does not allow them to use the EU's financial resources to finance COVID-19-related measures. However, the main beneficiaries will again be those Member States that have accumulated high levels of debt in recent years and failed to implement reforms to boost economic growth.

From the cep's point of view there would have been an alternative to SURE: the use of the credit lines of the European Stability Mechanism ESM.