Eurofound's EU PolicyWatch collates information on the responses of government and social partners to the COVID-19 crisis, the war in Ukraine, rising inflation, as well as gathering examples of company practices aimed at mitigating the social and economic impacts.
Factsheet for measure SE-2020-16/1261 – Updated – measures in Sweden
Country | Sweden , applies nationwide |
Time period | Temporary, 13 April 2020 – 01 January 2022 |
Context | COVID-19 |
Type | Legislations or other statutory regulations |
Category |
Income protection beyond short-time work
– Extensions of income support to workers not covered by any kind of protection scheme |
Author | Amanda Kinnunen (Oxford Research) |
Measure added | 07 October 2020 (updated 20 July 2021) |
In Sweden, self-employed cannot receive unemployment insurance unless they either permanently or temporarily cease the operations of the enterprise.
If a self-employed temporarily ceases the operations in order to receive unemployment insurance and then continues with the operations, they have to wait at least five years before they repeat this process. In addition, self-employed receiving unemployment insurance cannot work for their company while receiving the insurance. In case they work for the company, they lose their status as unemployed which leads to losing the insurance.
In order to support self-employed whose possibilities to continue business activities have become limited due to the COVID-19 crisis, temporary changes to the right of self-employed to unemployment insurance have been made.
The legal basis for these changes is temporary amendments to Decree on Unemployment Insurance (1997:835) (Förordning om arbetslöshetsförsäkring).
As a result of the temporary amendments, self-employed who receive unemployment allowance may continue with some activities related to the business operations during 2020 as long as the activities support the resumption of the operations when the market situation improves (e.g. some contact with clients or updating the company’s website). This temporary amendment entered in force 13 April 2020.
In addition, the so-called five-year rule has been temporarily removed. This means that self-employed who pause operations in 2020 in order to receive unemployment insurance may do so again within the next five years and still receive unemployment insurance. This has been possible since 1 July 2020.
These measures are available for all self-employed. There is no information available regarding the total budget of this measure.
The following updates to this measure have been made after it came into effect.
09 November 2020 |
This measure has been extended until 1 January 2022. |
As of 25 August 2020, 3,000 self-employed had been granted unemployment insurance. This is approximately 2,100 more than in 2019.
Workers | Businesses | Citizens |
---|---|---|
Self-employed
|
Solo-self-employed
One person or microenterprises |
Does not apply to citizens |
Actors | Funding |
---|---|
National government
Public employment service |
National funds
|
Social partners' role in designing the measure and form of involvement:
Trade unions | Employers' organisations | |
---|---|---|
Role | Unknown | Unknown |
Form | Not applicable | Not applicable |
Social partners' role in the implementation, monitoring and assessment phase:
No information available.
No information available.
Citation
Eurofound (2020), Self-employed can pause their business in order to receive unemployment insurance, measure SE-2020-16/1261 (measures in Sweden), EU PolicyWatch, Dublin, https://static.eurofound.europa.eu/covid19db/cases/SE-2020-16_1261.html
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