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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

Are Danes cutting back on cigarettes and alcohol?

Danish stores sold a significantly lower quantity of alcohol and cigarettes over the counter last year, new data from Statistics Denmark show.

Published: 14 June 2024 07:42 CEST
Are Danes cutting back on cigarettes and alcohol?

Some 3,852 cigarettes were sold year, which amounts to 804 per person over the age of 18. But that compares to a figures of 854 per person on 2022.

Cigarette sales in Denmark have been declining since 2018.

Sales of sprits, beer and wine fell by 7.8 percent, 5.3 percent and 0.9 percent respectively.

Danish business sold the equivalent of 44.4 million litres of pure alcohol, which works out at 11.9 units per week on average for each person over the age of 18.

Although that is a lower value than in 2022, it still exceeds the amount recommended by the Danish Health Authority (Sundhedsstyrelsen).

The Health Authority recommends that adults over 18 drink no more than 10 units per week and no more than four in a single day.

READ ALSO: Should Denmark raise the minimum age for buying alcohol?

“The numbers are still too high and it’s an average that could have a skewed distribution,” University of Southern Denmark professor, Janne Tholstrup, said in relation to the alcohol sales figures. Tholstrup has published research on Denmark’s alcohol culture.

That is in spite of a 30-year-trend of falling alcohol consumption, according to the professor.

“The majority of Danes stay under the recommended 10 unite per week. That means there is a large group with a persistently excessive consumption of alcohol,” she said.

The Statistics Denmark figures also show that sales of loose tobacco – such as the type used in roll-up cigarettes and pipes – also fell last year. Some 58 tonnes less were sold compared to 2022.

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