In accordance with the recommendation issued by the European Council that passive labour market policy measures should, where possible, be converted into active measures, the Austrian public employment service (AMS) is seeking to increase the scope for making more active use of funds spent in the field of employment promotion. In this context, attention focuses on the labour foundation measures and the continued entitlement to unemployment benefit or emergency aid for those on vocational training measures lasting up to three months. In addition, the provisions governing special emergency aid enable the support budget to be increased to an extent matching the passive benefits saved.
In 1997, a total of ATS 686 million (1996: ATS 458.5 million) were spent on active measures under the unemployment insurance law, benefiting a total of 25,895 persons (1996: 16,587). The table provides a summary of spending on active measures:
1998 will see a further marked increase in the extent to which passive expenditure has been "activated". Moreover, the implementation of the National Action Plan means that in 1999 an additional ATS 1 billion will be available to implement employment promotion measures within the framework of the activation of special emergency aid. Discussions are currently under way on an even more ambitious step: continued entitlement to unemployment benefit and emergency aid during participation in all training measures approved by the AMS, irrespective of their duration, instead of the current regulation which merely provides for a minimum maintenance allowance. This would enable an additional ATS 1 billion to be activated, enabling supplementary active measures to be implemented and project costs to be financed.
EU – European Commission DG EMPL/A/2 J
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