“The abolition of the A1 certificate for short-term business trips is a concrete and long-awaited improvement, particularly for SMEs. Removing specific barriers to cross-border trade, such as this one, is essential to ensure that the Single Market benefits SMEs and strengthens Europe’s economy”, welcomed Eurochambres on Thursday 30 April following the confirmation by Member States the previous day of the political agreement reached with the European Parliament on the rules for coordinating social security schemes (see EUROPE 13859/11).
This agreement aims to abolish the A1 certificate for short-term business trips and to introduce a three-day exemption for most cross-border service providers, except in the construction sector.
“After in-depth and sometimes complex discussions within the Council, this legal breakthrough is encouraging. This result reflects a pragmatic recognition of the operational realities facing businesses and mobile workers across the EU”, says Eurochambres.
The A1 certificate “has long been seen as a significant barrier to cross-border trade, creating an unnecessary administrative burden for businesses, particularly in non-essential sectors”.
This is obviously good news for the construction industry too. For the EFBWW, FIEC and EBC, “this milestone marks a decisive step towards clearer, fairer and more enforceable rules for social security coordination across the European Union, strengthening fair labour mobility and improving legal certainty for workers and companies alike”.
The agreement confirms that EU policymakers have listened to the concerns of the sector, which accounts for over 40% of all posted workers in the EU and is particularly exposed to the risk of fraud.
Conditional support from Belgium. On Wednesday 29 April, several countries historically opposed to the revision also gave the green light, including Belgium. The country did, however, issue a statement, again highlighting reservations about the chapter relating to unemployment benefits, where “some challenges remain and will need to be further addressed. The impact of the rule on the aggregation period set at one month, the transfer of competence to the Member State of employment after a 22-week affiliation period, and the extension of the export period from 3 to 6 months still give rise to some concerns as provisions to facilitate reintegration to work and for monitoring, activation and control are insufficient”.
Belgium thus welcomes “the Commission’s statement underlining the importance of control, activation or job placement measures and announcing further actions to modernise and simplify social security coordination rule”. And its support therefore remains subject to the Commission’s commitments on additional measures relating to activation and control.
“It is crucial that persons exporting their unemployment benefit fully comply with all control, activation or job placement measures in place in the receiving Member State, under the same conditions as unemployed persons receiving benefits from that Member State”.
Belgium is thus calling on the Commission to ensure, “in the framework of the upcoming Fair mobility package and a forthcoming revision of social security coordination regulations, that those extended rights to unemployment benefits be secured by improved administrative cooperation on the control, monitoring, and activation to facilitate rapid reintegration to work and the possibility for the competent institutions to apply sanctions, if necessary”. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)