On Wednesday 19 March, the Polish Presidency of the EU Council will ask the Member States to help it determine the way forward on the reform of the rules for the coordination of social security systems (883/2004).
After a period of uncertainty following a working group held on 30 January – partly due to the European Commission’s hesitation about withdrawing this regulation, which dates back to 2016 – the Polish Presidency has decided to relaunch the work and will ask the delegations four specific questions.
On the subject of prior notification for the posting of workers, and in particular postings of less than three days which would not require such notification, it will ask Member States whether they agree that this exemption can be applied to the construction sector. While the European sector remains opposed to this, fearing fraud, Member States such as France indicated at the beginning of the year that they were prepared to abandon the derogation for the sector.
In its note of 14 March, the Presidency explains that, at the meeting on 30 January, the Member States confirmed their general support for derogations for business travel and for activities not exceeding three days.
“Member States were mostly flexible to abandon the exclusion of the construction sector from the latter exemption in view of lack of sufficient data that would support such an exclusion”, she added. “Most Member States were also in favour of prior notification applying only to posted workers, without the need to extend it to other categories of workers whose situation does not give rise to fraud problems, since imposing prior notification for these categories would constitute an unnecessary administrative burden. This would apply in particular to civil servants”.
A certain “number of Member States expressed interest in a possibility of a delayed notification in justified and urgent cases”.
On the unemployment rules for cross-border commuters, it will ask Member States whether they can accept the reduction of the affiliation period to less than 25 weeks and, at the same time, support the reduction of the extended export period for unemployment benefits from 10 to 6 months.
The European Commission’s 2016 proposal introduces the principle of lex loci laboris for unemployed people who have resided in a Member State other than the competent State.
This is a very thorny issue. At the end of 2023, Spain proposed basing negotiations with the European Parliament on an uninterrupted membership period of 25 consecutive weeks. On 30 January, with regard to Member States, “their positions varied between 3 and 6 months (16-25 weeks) and beyond, while some Member States opted for maintaining the status quo and some others expressed flexibility in their positions”.
On 30 January, “many Member States indicated that an export period shorter than 10 months would be preferred”.
The Presidency will ask them again about pluriactivity, but will want to know whether they would consider a reduced scope of application of the revision as a fallback solution, as suggested by the Belgian Presidency in 2024. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)