Coordination of social security systems - no white smoke before New Year...

The hopes of the German EU Council Presidency to reach an agreement on the revision of the coordination of the social security systems before the end of the year have vanished.

During the latest interinstitutional meeting (trilogue), which took place on Monday 7 December, the European Parliament and the Council failed again to agree on the 3 remaining sensitive issues.

On the issue of prior notification (to posting), it is said that co-legislators have discussed the option of a three-day horizontal exemption (as opposed to the 10 or even 15 days initially envisaged by the German Presidency), with derogation from the exemption for some sectors (such as construction). It is also said that co-legislators have discussed a possible reference period for this time-based exemption, in order to avoid fraudulent conduct such as posting workers for multiple short-term assignments in order to benefit from the exemption from the requirement to provide notification.

As far as the construction sector is concerned, FIEC is opposed to any exemption from the prior notification procedure, in order to avoid abuse.

The issues of export of unemployment benefits for frontier workers and pluriactivity were reportedly not even addressed.

The dossier will certainly be passed on to the Portuguese EU Council Presidency, which will take over in the first half of 2021.