Free movement and access to social security in the EU: The challenge of exporting unemployment benefits
| Published date | 01 March 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13882627231161926 |
| Author | Christina Grabbe |
| Date | 01 March 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Free movement and access
to social security in the EU:
The challenge of exporting
unemployment benefits
Christina Grabbe
Institute of Intercultural and International Studies, University of Bremen, Germany
Abstract
The freedom of movement of EU workers and access to national welfare state systems has
become a controversial topic among policymakers in recent years. To understand this, the article
analyses the positions of Western European states towards the proposal of the European
Commission to reform the European social security coordination. The structural problems of
this reform and the current Regulation (EC) 883/2004 can be seen in the discussion on the export
of unemployment benefits. Although Western European states have similar insurance-based and
comprehensive unemployment systems, they have conflicting views on this issue. The article pre-
sents a comparative case study of Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany. Data was generated
via expert interviews and policy documents and analysed through institutionalist approaches. By
tracing the debates on the export of unemployment benefits, the article makes a more general
argument about the debate on the free movement of workers and social security in the EU. It
explains that policymakers’main concern is not only the financial burden on their welfare systems,
but also that the current Regulation (EC) 883/2004 and the reform proposal are incompatible with
national monitoring and enforcement systems, which are designed to work best when the worker
is in the Member State of last employment. This incompatibility of the coordination rules with
national rules creates opposition among policymakers to the access of EU workers to national wel-
fare systems.
Keywords
Free movement, EU coordination of social security, revision of social security Regulations,
institutions, social security benefits, unemployment benefits, welfare chauvinism
Corresponding author:
Christina Grabbe, Institute of Intercultural and International Studies, University of Bremen, Post Box 33 04 40, Bremen,
28334, Germany.
Email: cgrabbe@uni-bremen.de
Article
European Journal of Social Security
2023, Vol. 25(1) 20–40
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/13882627231161926
journals.sagepub.com/home/ejs
Introduction
While the debate on ‘social Europe’is intense and has received much attention, the main pillar of
the social embedding of the internal market –the social security coordination - is rarely discussed.
Since 1958, the freedom of movement for workers has been facilitated by the European coordin-
ation of social security systems, currently laid down in Regulation (EC) 883/2004 (Cornelissen,
2007). It enables workers and economically-inactive citizens to change between social security
systems when moving to other Member States of the EU. The rules apply to nationals of the
EU, Liechtenstein, Norway and Iceland and their family members, as well as to stateless persons
and refugees who have been covered by the social security of an EU country. The Regulation facil-
itates cash and in-kind transfers in relation to sickness, maternity and paternity leave, old age, pre-
retirement, pensions, survivors’benefits, unemployment, family benefits, accidents at work and
occupational diseases. However, while each mover has the right to free movement, the coordination
Regulation only coordinates the various national social systems. Social security benefits remain a
national responsibility and Member States can decide who is insured and who benefits in their
systems (Cornelissen and De Wispelaere, 2020: 146).
Despite the Regulation only having a coordinative function, access to national social security
systems has come under pressure in recent years. EU enlargement, economic crises and differ-
ences among EU Member States concerning welfare state and economic development have led
to the increasing and asymmetrical mobility of EU workers from east to west (e.g. Bruzelius
and Seelaib-Kaiser, 2017; Ruhs and Palme, 2018, Schmidt et al., 2018). At the centre of this
discussion are the ongoing negotiations on the reform of the European coordination of social
security. In December 2016, the European Commission submitted a proposal to revise this
Regulation.
1
The motivation for this proposal was a periodical adjustment of the social security
rules to the case law of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) as well as new types of benefits
(e.g. long-term care benefits) (Golynker, 2020). However, the increased politicisation of free
movement and social security rules in national public debates were also at stake, as seen for
example during the Brexit campaign (Schmidt et al., 2018). Since 2016, the reform discussion
has been ongoing and no agreement has been found to date. This is remarkable as the reform
strives to reconcile the problematic relationship between closed welfare states and EU labour
migration.
During the reform debates, the political leadership in several Member States of Western Europe,
especially in the UK, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and Austria voiced calls for more
restricted access of EU movers to national welfare benefits (Ruhs and Palme, 2018). For
example, the indexation of family benefits entered national political debates (Blauberger et al.,
2020). This raises the research question as to why these Member States have taken these positions
towards EU worker access to social security, as well as the question whether there are structural
problems of the reform causing these positions to be taken. The research question is relevant
because the scientific debate on the determinants of these positions of policymakers is undecided.
While some studies explain them through the impact of political parties and public opinion
(Mortera-Martinez and Odendahl, 2017; Blauberger et al., 2018, 2021), others see the influence
of institutions (Ruhs and Palme, 2018). To take the heterogeneity of EU Member States into
account, I utilise a rational choice approach that focuses on national welfare state institutions to
1. COM(2016) 815 final.
Grabbe 21
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