UNEMPLOYMENT : FRONTIER WORKERS: MEMBER STATE OF RESIDENCE RESPONSIBLE, SAYS ECJ.

PositionEuropean Court of Justice

A wholly unemployed frontier worker can obtain unemployment benefit from the social security system in his country of residence except in cases where he/she falls under the transitory system of a 2004 regulation coordinating national social security systems in the EU. Such is the ruling handed down by the EU Court of Justice, on 11 April, in Case C-443/11 in response to a preliminary question from the Court of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, regarding the interpretation of EU rules relating to national social security systems. Mr Jeltes, Ms Peeters and Mr Arnold are frontier workers of Dutch nationality who worked in the Netherlands but were resident in Belgium (Jeltes and Peeters) and Germany (Arnold). All three of them, on finding themselves unemployed, applied for unemployment benefits in the Netherlands but only those who submitted their claim before Regulation 883/2004 came into force were entitled to receive it.

Regulation 883/2004 (as amended by Regulation 988/2009) provides that wholly unemployed frontier workers are to make themselves available to the employment service of their country of residence. They may, as a supplementary step, make themselves available to the employment services of the country of their last employment. This follows from a previous ruling (Miethe, 12 June 1986) that an atypical frontier worker (in the sense that he had maintained close personal and professional links in the country of his last employment) should be allowed to choose the country in which he makes himself available to the employment...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT