Rescue plans tweaked as Europe looks ahead

UK to modify furlough scheme; EU works on deal of 1.85 trillion euros

LONDON－The British government will soon stop new workers joining the 8 million who have already been put on temporary publicly funded leave by their employers due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak is due to announce later this week how much employers will need to contribute to the furlough scheme from August, and is also expected to set new rules on part-time work, which is currently not allowed.

To avoid employers furloughing extra staff and bringing them back part time, with a government-subsidized wage, the government is likely to announce that scheme will stop accepting more people, the newspaper said, citing "allies of the chancellor".

Currently the British government pays 80 percent of the salary, up to 2,500 pounds ($3,083) a month, of almost any private-sector employee who is put on temporary leave due to the coronavirus.

Meanwhile, 134 COVID-19 patients died in Britain in the latest 24-hour period, taking the total coronavirus-related death toll in the country to 37,048, the Department of Health and Social Care said on Tuesday.

Across Europe, the virus had infected 1,843,581 people and claimed 168,308 lives as of Tuesday, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

Separately, The European Commission on Wednesday proposed a package worth in total 1.85 trillion euros for the EU's next long-term budget and a recovery fund for economies hammered by the coronavirus pandemic.

The package will help countries and sectors worst hit by COVID-19 recover quickly and protect the EU single market of 450 million people from being splintered by divergent economic growth and wealth levels as the 27-nation bloc emerges from its deepest recession expected this year.

The German federal government and the 16 states have agreed in principle to keep coronavirus contact restrictions in place until June 29, the Federal Press Office announced on Tuesday night.

Within the framework of this decision, federal states can maintain the previously applicable contact restrictions or allow up to 10 people or members of two households to stay in a public space. But states are also allowed to ease up or toughen other rules that regulate behavior in public spaces, infections rate permitting.

The German federal and state governments continue to recommend that people should keep their number of social contacts as low as possible and keep the size of their social groups as constant as possible.

As for the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany, it increased by 362 to 179,364, data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed on Wednesday. The reported death toll rose by 47 to 8,349.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday unveiled an 8-billion-euro ($8.78 billion) rescue plan to help the domestic auto industry hit hard by the anti-coronavirus lockdown. The plan focuses on the production of environmentally friendly vehicles.

"The state will provide more than 8 billion euros in aid to the sector," Macron said. "In return, the car manufacturers have committed to relocate value-added production to France and to consolidate and maintain all industrial production on our sites."

Since early March, the pandemic has killed 28,530 people in France, while the number of patients in hospitals and in intensive care units continue to drop, according to data released by the health ministry on Tuesday. A total of 18,195 patients died in hospitals and a further 10,335 in nursing homes and other medico-social establishments.

Xinhua - Agencies