The sup­port and recov­ery pack­age for com­pan­ies affected by the coronavir­us is con­stantly chan­ging. Below we provide a let­ter update on the recent devel­op­ments regard­ing the Tem­por­ary Emer­gency Meas­ures for the Pre­ser­va­tion of Employ­ment (“NOW“) and the Fixed Costs Allow­ance (“TVL“).

 

Amend­ments NOW

On Fri­day 12 March 2021, a num­ber of changes were pub­lished to the NOW schemes.  The para­met­ers for the fifth tranche of the NOW, which cov­ers the peri­od April to June 2021, have been aligned with the para­met­ers of the fourth tranche.  Employ­ers can once again receive com­pens­a­tion of up to 85% of their wage bill.

The changes also cov­er the peri­ods in which the final determ­in­a­tion of the vari­ous NOW schemes can be reques­ted.  The determ­in­a­tion of NOW 1 can be reques­ted until 31 Octo­ber 2021.  For NOW 2, the final date for the determ­in­a­tion is 5 Janu­ary 2022.

 

Account­ant pro­tocol and third-party declar­a­tion NOW 2

Com­pan­ies that receive an advance pay­ment of at least EUR 100,000 and/or a def­in­ite grant of EUR 125,000 under NOW 2 or who make use of the oper­at­ing com­pany scheme, require an auditor’s report for the determ­in­a­tion of NOW 2.  An import­ant addi­tion to the pro­tocol com­pared to NOW 1 is that the bonus and dividend pro­hib­i­tion must be checked for all com­pan­ies, not only for com­pan­ies using the oper­at­ing com­pany scheme.

The form for the third-party state­ment, which must be sub­mit­ted by employ­ers with an advance pay­ment of EUR 20,000 or more and/or a sub­sidy of EUR 25,000 or more, has not been amended com­pared to NOW 1.

 

Update TVL

The TVL schemes are also still being developed and amended.  The TVL offers com­pan­ies with a loss of turnover of more than 30%, an allow­ance for their fixed costs, the amount of which depends on the aver­age fixed costs per­cent­age in the sec­tor and the loss of turnover.  Spe­cif­ic or sup­ple­ment­ary schemes apply to cer­tain sec­tors.

 

Hard­ship clauses SBI codes

The sub­sidy for the TVL is partly determ­ined by the main activ­ity registered for the com­pany in the Trade Register of the Cham­ber of Com­merce on 15 March 2020.  Fol­low­ing a num­ber of rul­ings by the Trade and Industry Appeals Tribunal, it was decided to intro­duce spe­cif­ic hard­ship clauses in this regard.  Com­pan­ies whose actu­al activ­it­ies on 15 March 2020 were dif­fer­ent from those registered in the Trade Register may be gran­ted sub­sidy based on their actu­al activ­it­ies, if they can provide suf­fi­cient proof.

 

Approv­al by European Com­mis­sion

These hard­ship clauses must first be approved by the European Com­mis­sion. The European Com­mis­sion has already approved a num­ber of pre­vi­ously announced changes to the TVL on 17 March 2021,  such as the access of the TVL for non-SME busi­nesses as of the first quarter of 2021 and the increase of the max­im­um sub­sidy amounts per quarter. More inform­a­tion on when these changes will take effect is expec­ted in week 12.

 

The oth­er amend­ments to the TVL for the second quarter of 2021, such as the increase of the sub­sidy per­cent­age from 85% to 100%, will still be sub­mit­ted for approv­al at the end March 2021.

 

Con­clu­sion

In order to make optim­al use of the avail­able sup­port meas­ures, it is import­ant to con­tinu­ously invest­ig­ate the con­sequences of the changes to these meas­ures for your com­pany.  We are, of course, happy to sup­port you in this regard.