The European Parliament’s negotiating group and the German EU Council Presidency will meet again on Wednesday 18 November to discuss Regulation 883/2004 on the coordination of social security systems. After two years of negotiations, the co-legislators hope to reach an interim agreement.
Tomorrow will be the fourteenth interinstitutional meeting since the start of negotiations between the two co-legislators under the previous mandate (see EUROPE 12171/13).
Three main points remain to be discussed at the moment, namely: the modalities of pre-notification and the thorny question of exemptions, the definition of pluriactivity (and whether or not to include the “working time” criterion for determining a company’s location) and, finally, the question of the export of unemployment benefits for frontier workers, although significant progress was made on this last point at the previous meeting (see EUROPE 12593/5).
According to notes seen by EUROPE, the co-legislators are expected to move towards the following proposal on the export of unemployment benefits: if the frontier worker has paid contributions in a Member State for 24 months, he or she will be able to export 12 months of contributions.
In order to determine the State responsible for unemployment benefits, the worker must have paid contributions for at least six months over a period of 24 months. The EU Council wanted to require six uninterrupted months, but this would pose difficulties, in Parliament’s view, for workers with very fragmented employment contracts (as in the tourism sector). There would also still be a debate on a potential difference in treatment between cross-border and frontier workers.
With regard to prior notification, Parliament is reportedly still strongly opposed to the temporal exemption sought by the EU Council. The co-legislators will sound out the question of an exemption from the prior notification system for civil servants (an exemption requested by the Presidency) and will address the issue of the self-employed.
As for the question of pluriactivity, the positions reportedly remain unchanged: the European Parliament would like to incorporate the criterion of a company’s collective working time, while the EU Council is reportedly completely opposed to this.
Even if an interim agreement were reached, the matter would not be resolved: the Romanian EU Presidency had managed to reach an agreement with Parliament, but this agreement was rejected in extremis by the Committee of Permanent Representatives (see EUROPE 12225/15).
The interinstitutional meeting will start at 2 p.m., with the Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights, Nicolas Schmit, in attendance. Discussions will continue as long as necessary with a deadline of 10 p.m., we are told. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)