EU: rules reforming coordinated social security rights on hold

New rules to coordinate social security regimes aiming to modernize and clarify the rules that are to apply to workers who circulate within the EU and to encourage more worker mobility will not be adopted before the May European elections. The news was announced on 12 April to the Belgian press agency Belga by a spokesperson for the European Commissioner in charge of Employment, Marianne Thyssen, and notwithstanding the provisional agreement struck in March 2019 by the European institutions (c.f. article No. 11054). However the compromise proved too flimsy to be ratified either by the European Council of Ministers or the European Parliament. Among a number of thorny issues, the most contentious was the right to unemployment benefit payments for workers who circulate within the EU with neither the Council nor Parliament able to settle on a common solution.