European co-legislators are resuming the negotiations to find an agreement on the coordination of social security systems. This is good news for Europe’s Tech & Industry companies who are deeply enshrined in the internal market and rely on free and frictionless labour mobility within that single market.
The upcoming interinstitutional negotiation meeting on the revision of the Regulation on Social Security Coordination is of utmost importance to Tech & Industry sector. As the sector does not only produce high tech goods, but also provide services for these goods, free and frictionless labour mobility within the single market is crucial.
Prior notification – opting for a pragmatic & workable solution
The potential prior notification requirement causes concern for employees of the Tech & Industry sector that are regularly sent across the EU. Every short trip would create an excessive amount of additional administrative burden on companies. Time and energy that these days can be used elsewhere.
Negotiators acknowledged this problem and are willing to exempt business trips from the notification requirement. However, to create clarity, it would be necessary to agree on what exactly would be exempted.
This is where industry would prefer an exemption of a limited number of days. Avoiding room for interpretation and putting a solution into place that is workable in practice is in the interest of everybody: companies, employees and labour inspectors.
Interinstitutional negotiation – agreement within reach
The Councils’ approach to create an exemptions on the based on the duration of business trips – instead of on the planned activity as the Parliament would like – has industry’s full support. This approach solves the problem concerning business trips ánd emergency situations.
Urgent repairs of machines to prevent or end a production stop would be exempted too. It is also important to keep in mind what Chapter II of the Regulation on Social Security Coordination aims for. The goal is to determine in which country an employee is subject to social security. The revision wants to tackle the problematic use of postings in certain sectors. The prior notification of very short assignments as described are not problematic, nor are they the subject of illegal postings.
At a technical seminar organised by Ceemet and the Labour Mobility Initiative in October 2020, the negotiators from the European Parliament and Council acknowledged that the revision of the Coordination of Social Security is not just a technical matter but also very human one. Legal certainty is needed for all parties involved and everybody around the virtual table agreed to that.