After successful negotiations under the German Presidency of the Council of the European Union, the Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund for Displaced Workers (EGF) 2021-2027 was adopted with a large majority by the Council on 19 April 2021 and by the European Parliament on 27 April 2021. The new regulation applies retroactively from 1 January 2021 and regulates under which conditions the EGF can be used to support redundant workers.

The EGF will remain an independent fund that can respond flexibly to mass redundancies. For the period from 2021 to 2027, up to EUR 186 million will be available annually throughout the EU.

Compared with the EGF Regulation, which applied until 31 December 2020, various improvements have been made. Thanks to these, the EGF will be able to support redundant workers in even more cases in the future. These include the fact that the minimum number of redundancies has been reduced from 500 to 200 and that in future it will be sufficient if a major restructuring event has led to the mass redundancies. A correlation between redundancies and globalisation or a financial and economic crisis no longer needs to be proven.

This makes the funding considerably more flexible. The EGF is therefore already a good instrument for responding to future crises in the labor market that could arise from the consequences of automation and digitisation and the transition to a low-carbon economy.