CIGO, CIGD AND ORDINARY ALLOWANCE pursuant to Legislative Decree 104/2020 (August Decree): INPS provides employers with instructions for the use of a further 18 weeks.

Article 1 of the August Decree provides that employers who, during 2020, suspended or reduced work activity due to an event attributable to the COVID-19 epidemiological emergency, may request a period of ordinary redundancy fund, ordinary redundancy fund or redundancy fund in derogation, for a duration of:

• maximum of 9 weeks,
• increased by a further 9 weeks subject to certain conditions.

Please note: The total 18 weeks must fall within the period between 13 July 2020 and 31 December 2020.

The INPS confirms that employers can access the new period of salary integration treatments (9 + 9 weeks), "regardless of the use of social safety nets for the periods up to 12 July 2020". In other words, even employers who have never submitted an application for salary integration due to COVID-19 can request periods of salary integration pursuant to the August Decree.

Once the first 9 weeks have been requested and authorized and the relevant period has expired, employers will only be able to use the additional 9-week period, according to the conditions set out in the law, without being able to request any period not used in full relating to the first 9-week tranche.

Regarding the methods of submitting applications for CIGO, CIGD and ordinary allowance, as anticipated with Message no. 3131/2020, INPS confirms the system of the August Decree and proposes the mechanism of sending two distinct applications to request income support.

In particular, for related requests

• for the first 9 weeks, or the shorter period resulting from deducting the periods already requested or authorized pursuant to the previous legislation starting from 13 July 2020, employers continue to use the "national COVID-19" reason already in place;
• the additional period of 9 weeks, which can be requested exclusively by employers who have been fully authorized for the previous period of 9 weeks and provided that the aforementioned period has elapsed (therefore starting from 14 September), employers must submit an application using the new reason "COVID 19 with turnover".

The applications must be sent, under penalty of forfeiture, by the end of the month following the month in which the period of suspension or reduction in work activity began.