Source: European Parliament
Question for written answer E-002115/2025
to the Commission
Rule 144
Kostas Papadakis (NI)
Businesses are closing their doors due to fierce capitalist competition, but also as a result of capitalists’ decisions to invest in other sectors or countries, leaving thousands of workers jobless.
The so-called ‘European Globalisation Adjustment Fund’ (EGF) is billed as a ‘support’ measure for displaced workers. While temporary benefits, reskilling and training programmes financed by the fund may provide temporary relief for workers pushed into unemployment, they do not ensure the return of these workers to stable and decent work. On the contrary, they provide the various networks of so-called ‘training centres’ with a steady stream of clients.
In view of this, can the Commission say:
- 1.What view does it take of the fact that the EGF does not act as a mechanism for preventing layoffs or safeguarding employment rights, but rather as a mechanism for managing unemployment and absolving employers of their obligations towards their employees, whom they themselves have been responsible for displacing, as a result of the legislative framework on mass layoffs, which favours the interests of groups, based on Directive 98/59/EC?
- 2.What view does it take of the fact that, instead of supporting the displaced workers themselves during their unemployment, the money from the fund is mostly plundered by the various ‘vocational training centres’, whose owners make a fortune while providing substandard training programmes that fail to respond to the real needs of displaced workers, who receive laughable allowances if and when they participate in them?
Submitted: 27.5.2025