Tag: social security

States should transfer their social security payments for the unemployed to companies, so that they can employ the unemployed and maintain skills - even if this would breach trade laws - according to Ton Wilthagen, one of the pioneers in the 1990s of 'flexicurity', a concept that combines job flexibility with security.

Limosa, a little-known scheme that requires foreigners to register with social security before heading to Belgium for periods of temporary work, has caused concern in the European district of Brussels. The official behind the scheme, Sarah Scaillet, seeks to clarify the new law in an interview with EurActiv.

Climate change is likely to cause complex legal, foreign policy and security issues, claims Cleo Paskal in a paper for Chatham House published in June 2007. Adapting international law is only addressing part of the problem, he believes.

As Germany and France are struggling with the implications of labour reforms that Germany has already implemented and France is still deciding upon, the question arises of whether reforms should be based on successful Nordic models. 

David Blunkett, the UK work and pensions secretary, argues that more important lessons are to be learnt for EU member states from successful European social models than from those of the US and Asia.

The Danish concept of 'flexicurity'  - a combination of easy hiring and firing, high benefits for the unemployed and a pro-active labour market policy - is the talk of the town when labour market issues are being discussed in Brussels presently. Hans Skov Christensen, Director General of Dansk Industri, the association of Danish Industry, speaks out on the model's benefits from an employer's point of view.

At the end of 2002, a high-level panel of social and labour experts was asked to find a way forward for social policy in an enlarging European Union. Their report demonstrates how the European social model can maintain its central place in a functioning market economy.

At the Employment and Social Affairs Council meeting ministers presented a familiar yet vague catalogue of policy priorities designed to improve the EU's employment situation.

In their meeting on 1 December, the Employment and Social Affairs Council reached political agreement on reforming the regulation on social security co-ordination.

In the context of an ageing European society more attention needs to be drawn to the importance of adequate healthcare, volunteer work, social care, and the need to increase the participation of older persons in the labour force.

The Court of Justice ruled on 9 September that the time hospital doctors perform "on-call" should be considered in full as "working time" and be remunerated accordingly.

The EU's Employment and Social Affairs Ministers agreed on 3 December to modernise and coordinate the Member States' social security systems for migrant workers. They adopted a set of 12 parameters defining the options to modernise regulation (EEC) No 1408/71. This modernisation will allow legal non-EU nationals to move more freely within the EU without losing their social security rights.