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HEALTH

Spain considers extending furlough scheme until year’s end

Spain's Labour Minister Yolanda Diaz on Saturday suggested the government would extend its coronavirus furlough scheme for an extra three months until the end of the year.

Published: 2 August 2020 10:05 CEST
Spain considers extending furlough scheme until year's end
Spain's Labour Minister Yolanda Diaz. Image: Mariscal / POOL / AFP

Speaking after talks in Majorca with the regional government and union bosses, Diaz said it would make no sense to drop the ERTE furlough scheme when it is scheduled to finish at the end of September.

“It would not make any sense to drop a protection system as important as the one designed by the government,” she said of a scheme which has benefited millions of people.

“There is no point in designing a mechanism that involves huge amounts of public resources then at the decisive moment… we drop it,” she said in comments broadcast on Spain's RNE radio.

READ MORE: How the UK's new quarantine rules are impacting travel to Spain

“The key is in the last quarter of the year,” Diaz said, indicating she wanted to send a “message of calm”.

“We are not going to remove anything.”

Her remarks came a day after Spain formally went into recession after its GDP fell by 18.5 percent in the second quarter.

A total of 3.7 million people benefited from the government's furlough scheme between mid-March and the end of May, labour ministry figures show.

The government also banned layoffs in the six months after the end of the furlough scheme, although cutbacks are expected.

A commitment to fund such temporary unemployment schemes was one of the key measures put in place by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's government to bolster an economy battered by months of lockdown.

The pandemic also destroyed more than a million jobs in Spain between April and June, mostly in the services and tourism sector.

Spain's unemployment rate, which jumped to 15.3 percent by the end of June, could rise as high as 19 percent by the year's end, the government has warned, while the IMF sees it rising to 20.8 percent.

Hard hit by the virus which has killed more than 28,400 people, Spain has been struggling with a spike in new infections that has sparked European travel warnings and a British quarantine move that has damaged the fledgling recovery of tourism.

Member comments

  1. In the deepest recession since the Civil War, with unprecedented unemployment even higher that the 2007 crash and the highest youth unemployment in the OECD how on earth can the Spanish government find the billions of euros necessary to make such lavish payments for another 3 months? Foreign property owners beware as swinging additional taxes are en route for your principal and secondary homes, taxes on your bank accounts and even utility bills are already planned for by the Socialist Government from January 2021.

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HEALTH

Danish parties agree to raise abortion limit to 18 weeks

Denmark's government has struck a deal with four other parties to raise the point in a pregnancy from which a foetus can be aborted from 12 weeks to 18 weeks, in the first big change to Danish abortion law in 50 years.

Published: 3 May 2024 08:06 CEST
Danish parties agree to raise abortion limit to 18 weeks

The government struck the deal with the Socialist Left Party, the Red Green Alliance, the Social Liberal Party and the Alternative party, last week with the formal announcement made on Monday  

“In terms of health, there is no evidence for the current week limit, nor is there anything to suggest that there will be significantly more or later abortions by moving the week limit,” Sophie Løhde, Denmark’s Minister of the Interior and Health, said in a press release announcing the deal.

The move follows the recommendations of Denmark’s Ethics Council, which in September 2023 proposed raising the term limit, pointing out that Denmark had one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Western Europe. 

READ ALSO: 

Under the deal, the seven parties, together with the Liberal Alliance and the Conservatives, have also entered into an agreement to replace the five regional abortion bodies with a new national abortion board, which will be based in Aarhus. 

From July 1st, 2025, this new board will be able to grant permission for abortions after the 18th week of pregnancy if there are special considerations to take into account. 

The parties have also agreed to grant 15-17-year-olds the right to have an abortion without parental consent or permission from the abortion board.

Marie Bjerre, Denmark’s minister for Digitalization and Equality, said in the press release that this followed logically from the age of sexual consent, which is 15 years old in Denmark. 

“Choosing whether to have an abortion is a difficult situation, and I hope that young women would get the support of their parents. But if there is disagreement, it must ultimately be the young woman’s own decision whether she wants to be a mother,” she said. 

The bill will be tabled in parliament over the coming year with the changes then coming into force on June 1st, 2025.

The right to free abortion was introduced in Denmark in 1973. 

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