April 21 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria's government said it decided to request further financial assistance of 999.4 million levs ($556.6 million/511 million euro) from the European Commission to tackle the economic and social fallout of the pandemic.
The request will be made under the European instrument for temporary support to mitigate unemployment risks in an emergency (SURE), the government said in a statement on Wednesday.
This will be Bulgaria's second application for funding under the SURE instrument, as the EU has already disbursed 511 million euro. The funds to be used to support the implementation of the country's job retention scheme known as the '60-40 measure', which was introduced in April 2020 to soften the impact of the coronavirus crisis on employment.
In March, the labour ministry announced that it will extend the measure until June 30.
Bulgaria's registered unemployment rate decreased by 0.1 percentage point month-on-month in March, to 4.8%, the government's employment agency said last week.
Financial assistance under the SURE is paid out in the form of EU loans to member states to help them cope with sudden and significant spikes in public spending needed to alleviate the negative economic, social and health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.