Remarks by Executive Vice-President Mînzatu on the Fair Labour Mobility Package

We often say that the Single Market is one of Europe's biggest achievements.

Almost 20 million Europeans live in another EU country, cross a border for work or are sent abroad temporarily by their employer.

Over the years, we have built detailed rules to protect their rights, including access to healthcare, pensions and social security.

Just a few months ago, after ten years of negotiations, we reached an historic agreement to update our social security rules.

But people still face barriers getting the protection they need, and companies still struggle with complicated procedures.

Today we are taking a concrete step to really simplify our internal market and make labour mobility fairer for workers.

The Fair Labour Mobility Package we just adopted in college is composed of six legislative proposals:

Let me summarise the package in 5 messages.

My first message: we move from paper-based to a digitalised labour mobility.

Every company and worker in Europe knows about the lengthy processes to get the famous Portable Document A1 for posting which costs time and money.

With ESSPASS we fully digitalise the process to request and receive social security documents, starting PDA1, continuing with: healthcare, pensions, unemployment, sickness benefits.

The gamechanger: from endless paperwork to one mobile phone app, standardised, verifiable in real time that saves time and money for workers, companies and authorities.

Second message: better enforcement through a stronger European Labour Authority.

For our businesses to perform and for our workers to be protected, we need to make sure that rules are clear and respected.