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.
The March 2019 compromise (c.f. article No. 11054) and which the Council had had to validate intended to apply a one month of continuous activity criterion before workers from a different EU Member State could be eligible for unemployment benefits relating to the country within which he/she had been carrying out the activity. This point had proven difficult for some of the governments to accept, and in reply to Planet Labor, a spokesperson from the Romanian presidency team in Brussels indicated
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