The Portuguese Presidency of the EU Council obtained the approval of the national delegations to resume negotiations with the European Parliament on Regulation 883/2004 on the coordination of social security systems, at the meeting of the Ambassadors of the EU Member States (Coreper I) on Wednesday 24 February.
The Portuguese Presidency obtained a very flexible mandate, as its approach suggested, according to the document that EUROPE had obtained earlier in the week (see EUROPE 12663/23). With it, the Council of the EU has given its approval for a horizontal exemption for business trips and for a temporary exemption from prior notification before sending an employee. However, no time limit has been set. According to our information, the national delegations gave a range of between 3 and 7 days.
With regard to pluriactivity, the Presidency maintains the removal of the criterion based on working time to determine the place of activity of a company. With regard to unemployment benefits for frontier workers, the Presidency will resume negotiations for a 6-month export with uninterrupted affiliation, with the possibility of a longer export for frontier workers with a longer period of affiliation to the social security system of the responsible Member State.
During the exchanges, the Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, Sweden and Luxembourg opposed the mandate. The problem for these Member States remains the question of the export of unemployment benefits for frontier workers. The Visegrád Group countries supported the mandate in question, although Hungary expressed some reluctance. They will wait to see the outcome of the negotiations to make a statement.
The mandate remains flexible and deliberately imprecise. Negotiations with the European Parliament, which will resume on Monday 1 March, will have to clarify the question of the duration of the temporary exemption in particular. But there is a real willingness to close this file on the EU Council’s side, several sources tell us. Some hope that an agreement can be reached at the first interinstitutional meeting under the Portuguese Presidency.
To read the Presidency document: http://bit.ly/3slG1gD (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)