The European Employment group hosted a Webinar to cover the Covid-related restrictions for employment terminations

Below you may find a summary of the event insights.

EMPLOYMENT WEBINAR – An Overview

The global spread of Covid-19 is forcing employers worldwide to adopt different measures to be able to continue the business activity while trying to maintain as many jobs as possible

• The panelists covered the most restrictive countries in Europe such as Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Austria, Slovenia, Romania, Cyprus and North Macedonia

May 2021 – The global spread of Covid-19 is forcing employers worldwide to adopt different measures to be able to continue the business activity while trying to maintain as many jobs as possible.

In addition, multiple legal regulations have been enacted to try to alleviate the consequences that Covid-19 could have on employment, and this because the governments were fully aware that the difficulties that companies have gone through could lead to a large number of dismissals.

The pandemic caused by Covid-19 has surprised all states, which, in the absence of previous similar events, have been forced to draw up and approve regulations in record time. This speed in the approval of Covid-19 regulations has led on numerous occasions to legal void, without companies knowing exactly what to expect or what the consequences of non-compliance with the regulations would be.

This is why the European Employment Practice of Andersen had covered the restrictions for employment termination across Europe in a webinar celebrated on Wednesday, April, 12.

In most European countries, the doubts raised have been practically similar, with one of the main questions being whether, during the Covid-19 situation, it is possible to dismiss workers for reasons unrelated to Covid-19 or even directly related to Covid-19, as well as, the consequences that could arise for the employer if he were to proceed with these dismissals.

All these questions, along with many others, have been answered in this Webinar in which the European Employment group showed the main instruments available for companies in each country to mitigate the consequences of Covid-19.

The whole event was presented and moderated by Alfredo Aspra, Partner at Andersen in Spain, and Employment Head for Andersen in Europe.

The presentations started with the General employment termination restrictions under Covid-motivated legislations, explained by Anastasios Triantafyllos, managing Partner at Andersen Legal in Greece.

The Employment termination possibilities during and after state-subsidized short-time work were covered by Maja Stojko, Associate in Slovenia. After her intervention, Francesca Capoferri, Partner in Italy described, Other employment termination restrictions linked to state subsidies or aids.

Lastly, the Consequences for violating these restrictions were explained by Pablo Santos, Partner in Andersen in Spain.

Our Managing Partner, Anastasios Triantafyllos was among key speakers and presented the Greek chapter.

This event was a part of the initiatives that started with the last webinar about Teleworking, as part of their will to provide a pan-European perspective to some of the most relevant matters in Employment terms in Europe, as nowadays all the European countries are taking a similar approach in terms of Employment and Labor Law, and every new regulation in a European country has an impact in other countries in the Region. That is why the group thinks it was crucial to work in a uniform and harmonized way through the Andersen Employment Group.

The European Employment Group has almost 100 lawyers in Europe only dedicated to Employment matters. The group intends that through constant contact and communication will be able to anticipate our clients’ needs and promote different initiatives that will help them to solve daily questions like the ones addressed during this session.

• Other Employment Law related questions, check our latest publications with a European overview of:

Dismissals Guide – Overview of termination procedures for employees in 21 European countries.

FAQs regarding Vaccination – Overview of the requirements and obligations that employers have regarding the Vaccine.