SURE A welcome lynchpin for a European unemployment re-insurance

On 9 April 2020, the EU finance ministers of the enlarged Eurogroup (with the ministers of the eight countries which are not members of the euro area) agreed, at least in principle, to implement SURE, a pan-European support system for national short-time work schemes, proposed by the European Commission. We will discuss the relationship between this proposal and the idea of a European unemployment re-insurance scheme, to which the Commission also refers in its communication on SURE. Rather than an “unemployment (re)insurance scheme”, in its first-order effect, SURE is above all a “job insurance scheme”.