December 14 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria received 460 million euro ($489.9 million) under the European instrument SURE to help address the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on jobs and workers, the European Commission said on Wednesday.
Overall, the Commission disbursed over 6.5 billion euro to nine member states, it said in a statement.
In addition to Bulgaria's loan, the Commission granted 29 million euro to Cyprus, 2.5 billion euro to Czechia, 900 million euro to Greece, 550 million euro to Croatia, 142 million euro to Lithuania, 167 million euro to Latvia, 1.5 billion euro to Poland and 300 million euro to Portugal.
Including the latest and final transaction, SURE has provided so far a total of 98.4 billion euro of assistance to 19 member states.
The latest loans will fund past expenditure on measures introduced to tackle the severe socio-economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis, the European Commission said. They will help member states to cover the costs related to the financing of national short-time work schemes and other similar measures.
The latest disbursements were financed by the Commission’s issuance of 6.55 billion euro of social bonds last week.
Bulgaria requested additional funding under SURE in April in order to support the implementation of the country's job retention scheme known as the '60-40 measure'. It was introduced in April 2020 to alleviate the impact of the coronavirus crisis on employment.
With the fresh funding, the country has received a total of 971 million euro under the European instrument.
($ = 0.9389 euro)