In reponse to the European Commission’s public consultation on EU social security coordination on the revision of Regulations (EC) No 883/2004 and (EC) No 987/2009, which closed on 7 October 2015, ECAS made the following recommendations:
Recommendation 1: A new provision should be inserted into Regulation 883/2004 that explicitly provides for the right of EU citizens who are not working to be able to affiliate with the public healthcare system of the Member State where they reside under the same conditions that apply to nationals.
Recommendation 2: A new provision should be inserted into Regulation 883/2004 that explicitly provides for the exportability of long-term benefits.
Recommendation 3: the period for the exportability of Article 64(1)(c) of Regulation 883/2004 should be increased to six months (if not longer) and allow the competent services or institutions to extend that period by another six months (if not longer).
Recommendation 4: reform of the rules on family benefits must give due consideration to the established case law of the Court of Justice on this point in order to ensure full respect for the principle of equal treatment.
Recommendation 5: an official table of correspondence should be published that identifies old E Forms and the corresponding Portable Documents and Structured Electronic Documents.
Recommendation 6: Article 6 of Regulation 987/2009 needs to be bolstered, so it also covers employees wrongly affiliated to a Member State in breach of the rules on applicable law, irrespective of whether Member State disagree under whose system the worker should be affiliated. In such cases, the institution with which the worker was incorrectly affiliated should be under a legal obligation to transfer incorrectly paid contributions to the competent institution within three months of the problem being identified.
Recommendation 7: Regulations 883/2004 and 987/2009 need to provide additional safeguards for employees who have become unemployed following insolvency and whose employers did not make compulsory social security contributions.
Recommendation 8: An obligation on Member States to collate statistical information on the number of EU citizens (and EEA nationals) claiming benefits should be inserted into Regulations 883/2004 or 987/2009. Such data should be disaggregated by gender, age and type of benefit. There should be an obligation to make this information public.
Recommendation 9: Consideration should be given to aligning the conditions under which a posting may take place under Article 1 so that these are aligned to the rules for the posting of workers under the EU social security rules. The inclusion of an obligation to publish statistics on posted workers should also be considered.
Read the full reply here.