Plaid Euro MP Jill Evans says that she is surprised and dismayed that the Assembly Government has failed to apply to a special European fund to help offset the loss of the Burberry factory in Treorci - despite the fact that she wrote personally to the minister in March to highlight the establishment of the fund.
She said today:
"I wrote to the then Economic Development Minister Andrew Davies when Burberry went ahead with the closure of the factory in Treorci, pointing out that the European Union has recently established a Globalisation Adjustment Fund to provide funds for workers for training and preparing for alternative work. The idea is to counterbalance the effects of businesses moving from the European Union to places with cheaper labour such as China and India .
"It would be invaluable for the Burberry workers hoping to establish a cooperative to take over the Treorci factory for example.
"Although in most cases the fund is available in situations where more than 1,000 workers are made redundant there is a clause which takes into account cases where a community is affected by a closure as it is a major employer in the community, as in the case of Treorci.
"Now we learn that there have been just two applications to this 500m Euro fund, and both have been from France."
Jill Evans, who represents the whole of Wales in the European Parliament, said that she was seeking an explanation of this inaction:
"Bearing in mind that I wrote to Andrew Davies in March, there was plenty of time before the Assembly elections to start the ball rolling. The French government have clearly seen the merits of the fund as they commented that it was there to help people get jobs and get back on their feet.
"It is vital that the Assembly Government makes an urgent, albeit belated, case to the UK Government to request funding from this European fund for the former Burberry workers."
