Government Allocates 450 Million To Catalonia For Active Employment Policies

Catalonia will receive 449.8 million euros to finance its employment, job placement and qualification programs, out of the 2,794 million distributed by the Government in the sectoral conferences held this week.

The Generalitat will receive 16.1% of the funds allocated between the Ministries of Labor and Education for active employment and training policies; an investment that reverses the cuts of more than 80 million euros experienced the previous year and that returns to 2019 levels; as they have made public from the Department of Treball in a statement.

In the meeting held during the morning of this Wednesday, and which lasted approximately four hours, the Ministry of Labor has decided to allocate the 2,111 million euros reserved for employment policies.

An amount that can be added to the 683 million euros approved in the Council of Ministers this past Tuesday and distributed by the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training. From the first game, Catalonia will have 345 million euros and from the second another 103 million .

These funds are used to pay for the programs designed by the SOC , and deployed by the same or in collaboration with private organizations, and intended for the more than half a million people who are currently unemployed in Catalonia to find one. Also so that active professionals can access training or retraining courses offered from public employment offices.

Between Work and Education they have put on the table a total of 2,794 million euros, which represents an increase of 6.6% compared to the allocations distributed among the communities in the last year prior to the covid.

The increase, however, is not proportional to the rise in unemployment experienced since the first state of alarm was declared. Well, the number of unemployed has grown between March 2020 and March 2021 by 11.3% ; up to 3.9 million unemployed. In other words, unemployment has grown almost twice as much as the funds to combat it directly.

Pending another 1,100 million
The substantial increase in this exercise compared to the previous ones will not be put by the Government (not at least directly), but by the European Union. Work is at the expense of distributing between the communities another 1,100 million euros that have to come from European funds.

Sources consulted from the Department of Labor explain that Trabajo has not explained the criteria by which it will decide the distribution of said funds. If they reproduced the same criteria as those of the first quota, Catalonia would have about 175 million euros.

The new Employment Law, very close
In addition to the allocation of funds discussed this Wednesday between the Ministry of Labor and the autonomous communities, the third vice president, Yolanda Díaz, has reiterated that the approval of the new Employment Law is “imminent.”

An imminence, however, that has been reiterating in recent weeks. Several of the novelties that this regulation will introduce is the creation of a charter of rights to which all citizens in all autonomous regions will have access. These include profiles of job seekers, to improve their connectivity with offers; as well as individualized and sustained attention over time.

The vice president also reiterated during the press conference after the Employment Sector Conference that Airef will audit the spending of active employment policies and the degree of efficiency of the same. Sources of Work have detailed that the independent entity will begin to examine the public accounts from this year.