Frontier workers must enjoy the same social advantages as resident workers, ruled the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in a judgment handed down on Thursday 16 May (case C-27/23).
In Belgium, a worker with frontier worker status in Luxembourg receives family allowances from the Luxembourg scheme for a child placed in his home by the Belgian courts. He contested the decision of the Luxembourg Caisse pour l’avenir des enfants (Children’s Future Fund) to withdraw this allowance from him on the grounds that it was limited to children who have a direct parent-child relationship with frontier workers, whereas in Luxembourg children placed by the courts receive such an allowance, which is paid to the natural or legal person who has custody of them.
In its ruling, the CJEU points out that frontier workers contribute to the funding of social policies in the host country through the tax and social security contributions they pay to the State where they are employed. As such, they must be entitled to family benefits and social and tax advantages under the same conditions as national workers.
The Court considers that the Luxembourg legislation at issue gives rise to a difference in treatment contrary to EU law and constitutes indirect discrimination on grounds of nationality.
The European judge specified that the fact that the child’s placement had been decided by a court in a country other than the one in which the worker was based had no bearing. And the question of whether the frontier worker himself provides for the upkeep of the child placed in his home cannot have relevance if this condition is not also applied to the resident worker with whom a child is placed.
To see the judgment of the Court of Justice, go to https://aeur.eu/f/c8m (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)