Brussels, 03/04/2012 (Agence Europe) - Should a standard clause on the coordination of social security systems be included in the new association agreements with third countries, and should a new kind of agreement be developed exclusively focusing on this question? These are the two central ideas proposed by the European Commission on Friday 30 March in a communication on “The external dimension of coordinating social security in the European Union”.
The objective is clear: promoting start-ups for foreign companies that have to confront the huge diversity of social security systems, when they often consider that the EU is an area governed exclusively by common rules. These systems are currently governed by national bilateral agreements, which the Commission considers as an obstacle to companies from third countries that wish to operate in a number of member states. The Commission also wants to introduce greater legal clarification with regard to these agreements and EU law, whilst proposing a variety of different ways for facilitating coordination between member states. This particularly involves current pension rights. The introduction of a standard clause aims to guarantee that three principles in the area of coordinating social security systems are respected: the principle whereby pensions can be exported, equal treatment and administrative cooperation.
Although some of the Commission's ideas involve improving the current model, by standardising the clauses on social security in national agreements, Brussels also wants to go further, by creating a new kind of common agreement (between the EU and third countries). This would enable the “application of a flexible social security coordination strategy as part of the association agreements” and could be concluded “with third countries with which there is currently no association or cooperation agreement”. The Commission's idea of flexibility suggests a possibility of responding to problems linked to a third country or specifically involving a given member state. In these cases, the application of such an agreement would be optional for the other member states.
The Commission is seeking to go further and is proposing the tightening up of cooperation in this area with Albania, Montenegro, St Martin and Turkey - which would include the export of full pension rights under the basic pension systems for European nationals working in these countries, as well as migrants from these countries who have recently set up in a member state of the EU. (JK/transl.fl)