Yana Toom (ALDE). – Mr President, one of the four freedoms enjoyed by EU citizens is the free movement of workers. Free movement is hardly possible without social guarantees for workers and their family members, and efficient coordination of Member States’ social security systems. When mobile workers move between EU Member States for jobs, one key concern is that they can lose social rights earned in another country. It is also clear that the number of cross-border workers could increase if there was better coordination of social security systems between neighbouring Member States.

Regretfully, the current regulation is outdated and ought to be revised. Hard work was done in both my parliamentary committees, the Committees on Petitions and on Employment and Social Affairs, but as we know, our trilogue agreement was finally not possible due to the conflicting views in the Council. No doubt we’ll go back to this topic in the very near future. In this context, I would also like to underline that national discrimination against mobile workers is clearly outlawed by the Treaties. I regret any attempt to put artificial obstacles for Eastern European workers in their access to social benefits in the old Member States.

Most importantly, I cannot support the indexation of family benefits in the place of residence of the children. This measure is both inappropriate and discriminatory, and it creates a complex, expensive and unnecessary bureaucratic monitoring system. Similar discriminatory measures should not be included in any future proposals regarding coordination of Europe social security systems.