Problems of social security coordination in the EU

Subject: Problems of social security coordination in the EU

Although harmonised social security legislation covers many social security issues for cross-border workers, several bottlenecks arise in practice. These include insufficient regulation and non- registration of periods of insurance for other social security benefits, such as maternity benefits, and differences in legislation between Member States, non-registration of shorter periods of insurance from abroad for pension purposes and lack of legal certainty for citizens working in several Member States, or the recognition of periods of work from abroad only when applying for an old-age pension and not on an ongoing basis.

1. Does the Commission intend to introduce uniform conditions for the entitlement to maternity leave and other similar benefits, or does it envisage that periods worked abroad will be counted uniformly, as is the case with old-age pensions?

2. Does the Commission intend to introduce and guarantee the crediting of periods worked abroad for pension insurance purposes, even in cases of short periods of only a few months?

3. Is the Commission planning to introduce an information system for the automatic aggregation of pension insurance periods from all EU countries, or any other similar instrument which would guarantee that workers who have worked in several Member States have their periods of service counted on an ongoing basis and not only when they apply for an old-age pension?

Submitted: 1.6.2023

Answer given by Mr Schmit on behalf of the European Commission

(14 July 2023)

The Commission is aware that the disparities between national social security schemes can cause challenges to mobile workers. To mitigate these effects, Regulation (EC) No 883/2004 (1) provides for the coordination of national social security schemes in cross- border situations.

1. The principle of aggregation of periods (2) provides that periods of insurance, employment or residence completed in one Member State are taken into account, where necessary, for the entitlement to a benefit in another State.

Directive 92/85/EEC (3) establishes minimum standards regarding maternity leave and provides for at least 14 weeks’ period and payment of an adequate allowance, at least at the level of pay when the worker is sick. (4) The Work-life balance Directive, (5) adopted in 2019, also stipulates minimum standards regarding paternity leave and family benefits such as parental leave.

2. Article 57 of Regulation (EC) No 883/2004 contains rules for the coordination of insurance periods of less than one year, according to which, if a person has been insured in a Member State for less than one year and this State does not grant a pension, the period is adopted by another state under their laws and treated as their own periods when the pensions are calculated. (6)

3. The set up of a European Tracking Service for Pensions is supported via a call for proposals under the European Social Fund Plus (ESF +) programme. The aim is to bring together information from different national pension tracking services in order to give users access to information about their pension rights from different pension schemes in different Member States at any point during their lives. The successful set up of a European wide pension tracking system will depend on the existence of national tracking systems and on whether Member States will connect these to the European one.

1 ∙ ⸱ OJ L 166, 30.4.2004.

2 ∙ ⸱ Article 48 TFEU, Article 6 of Regulation (EC) No 883/2004.

3 ∙ ⸱ OJ L 348, 28.11.1992.

4 ∙ ⸱ Article 11 of Directive 92/85/EEC.

5 ∙ ⸱ OJ L 188, 12.7.2019.

6 ∙ ⸱ This Article does not apply to the schemes listed in Part 2 of Annex VIII of Regulation (EC) No 883/2004.