Coordination of social security within the state: Questions to be addressed
| Author | Danny Pieters |
| DOI | 10.1177/1388262719845499 |
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Editorial |
Editorial
Coordination of social
security within the state:
Questions to be addressed
Danny Pieters
Faculty of Law, KU Leuven, Belgium
Introduction
When the European Institute of Social Security organised its annual conference on the topic
of social security and federalism in Amsterdam in 2017, it became immediately clear that
we were confronted here with a complex, yet increasingly interesting topic on the border
line of constitutional law and social security law. Whereas the 2017 conference in Amster-
dam examined the actual distribution of competences and related responsibilities between
central government, regions and local authorities, the next area to be explored related to
how to deal with the different ways regions and local authorities used their devolved or
decentralied social security competences. What if a person moved from one region or
municipality to another? What if two regions or municipalities claim to be competent or,
even worse, claim not to be competent for a devolved or decentralised scheme? In other
words, what about the internal coordination of the devolved and decentralised schemes? We
are familiar with the issues of coordination between states, now we look within the borders
of one state.
Concepts
Before conducting an investigation into the internal coordination of social security schemes, it is
advisable to establish a conceptual framework that defines the key concepts to be used. This is
especially necessary for the concepts of federalism, decentralisation and deconcentration.
1
When the constitution of a state establishes autonomous competence to (some of its) territorial
components, we are faced with federalism. We shall use the notion of federalism in this broad
Corresponding author:
Prof. Dr. Danny Pieters, Faculty of Law, KU Leuven, Blijde-Inkomststraat 17 – box 3409, Leuven, Belgium.
E-mail: danny.pieters@law.kuleuven.be
1. To a large extent based in my Amsterdam 2017 contribution ‘Federalism and devolution in social security’. See Pieters
(2019, forthcoming).
European Journal of Social Security
2019, Vol. 21(2) 95–99
ªThe Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1388262719845499
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