Digitalisation in social security

Key points

The EESC:

• acknowledges the challenges in cross-border social security coordination, such as the complexity of bureaucratic procedures, manual procedures and the need for certain documents to be in physical form and the difficulties in verifying or validating them, which hinder free movement for citizens and businesses;

• welcomes and fully supports the Commission's goal to simplify cross-border social security and healthcare coordination through digitalisation;

• calls for the immediate development of a comprehensive action plan to digitalise social security coordination with a bottom-up approach, while highlighting the importance of considering the needs of social security institutions and stakeholders, including citizens, employers, companies and social economy entities;

• urges alternative solutions to be provided for those unable to use electronic means or who are otherwise digitally excluded. The EESC emphasises that digital identification should be an option, not a requirement, until suitable alternatives are established that respect the relevant data protection standards;

• believes that we will not be able to achieve our goals of removing obstacles to free movement solely by digitalising social security until the reform of Regulation 883/2004 on the coordination of social security systems is finalised;

• proposes establishing a permanent exchange of best practices between Member States on digitalising the coordination of social security systems. In order to encourage and promote this, the EESC suggests that the Commission and the European Labour Authority organise a conference in which Member State governments and civil society participate.