Assistance Measure for the Tourism Sector Allows for Quicker Recovery

The Chamber of Commerce contacted the Government of the Republic with the wish to emphasise the need for the assistance measure for the tourism sector, because the crisis arising from COVID-19 has had an extensive impact on the sector and there is no foreseeable improvement of the situation in the coming months.

In the Chamber’s opinion, the negative impacts arising from the crisis could be alleviated by paying entrepreneurs operating in the tourism sector a salary compensation through the Unemployment Insurance Fund, which would be clearly aimed at maintaining key competencies of the sector and which would support the development and further growth of the sector.

The main aim of the assistance measure or the salary compensation should be to preserve work for qualified employees that are very important for the tourism sector. In the coming months, the number of tourism sector jobs will significantly decrease and that trend cannot be changed by the assistance measure, but that measure would help to preserve a critical number of jobs in the sector and would stop the potential outflow of competencies. The jobs preserved through the measure will allow restarting the offering of tourism services once the crisis is over and restore jobs in the sector.

According to the Chamber’s proposal, the conditions for the salary compensation aimed at the tourism sector could be the following:

• Similarly to spring, the salary compensation could be offered for three months;
• The salary compensation paid by the Unemployment Insurance Fund could be 50 percent of the average salary of an employee, but not more than 800 euros per month;
• The employer’s contribution must be at least 300 euros;
• In order to obtain the compensation, the turnover of an employer must have been fallen at least 50 percent as compared to the same period of the previous year;
• It should be possible to request the salary compensation by accommodation companies (I 55), restaurant and catering companies (I 56), travel agencies and travel organisers (N 79), companies involved in passenger transport (H 4939, H 501, H 511) and conference and fairs organisers (N 82301);
• It should be possible to apply for the salary compensation for an employee employed under an employment contract who started working no later than on 1 March 2020;
• The employer should not have any tax arrears as of 1 March 2020, or the tax arrears must be paid or postponed by the time of submission of the application (including the postponement schedule must be followed), annual reports of the past two financial years must have been submitted in due time;
• Furthermore, other conditions that were applicable for follow-up compensation for salary could be applicable, incl. it could be reasonable to request a business plan or risk analysis, which would show that entrepreneur has assessed sustainability of business in the future at least on some level.
• According to the calculations of the Unemployment Insurance Fund, the cost of such measure would be approximately 15 million euros.