State of play, main conclusions, outlook

The Commission’s work programme 2018 announced the European Social Security Number (ESSN). At the beginning of 2018, the Regulatory Scrutiny Board issued a negative opinion on the draft Impact Assessment and asked to better address the costs, benefits and data protection requirements of the different policy alternatives, and highlighted that other technical solutions should be analysed.

The Commission continued to examine further the various policy and technical options. This assessment showed that the introduction of such a domain-specific European unique identifier (number) was not a relevant cost-effective solution to achieve the overall objective, and could pose data privacy as well as considerable proportionality and subsidiarity issues, while another initiative, i.e. the future EU digital identity framework (revision of the eIDAS regulation), could be leveraged for identification purposes.

The Commission has therefore discontinued exploring the introduction of a new, cross sectorial, “number” and instead announced, in March 2021, in the European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan, the launch of a pilot project on the European Social Security Pass.

European Social Security Pass pilot project

In the context of social security coordination, the Commission has launched a pilot project on the European Social Security Pass (ESSPASS) to explore a digital solution for the cross-border verification of social security coverage and entitlements. Benefits would include simplifying mobile citizens’ interactions with administrations and facilitating the exercise of the portability of social security rights across borders. This could help to reduce the administrative burden on citizens and national authorities and to combat fraud and errors in the social security coordination field.

The Commission Work Programme for 2023 announced an initiative on digitalisation in social security, in connection with the work on ESSPASS (planned adoption: third quarter of 2023). This initiative will explain the objectives and challenges of digitalisation in social security coordination to support the free movement of persons in the Single Market and clarify synergies and complementarities between the existing digital initiatives.

REFIT Platform

The REFIT Platform also issued an opinion (Ref. VII 5a) on social security coordination in September 2017 following the submission by a citizen suggesting that training national authorities and their better awareness of the rules would improve the coordination of social security systems in the EU. In the opinion, the REFIT Platform Stakeholder group emphasised the need for training and a better use of existing networks. The majority of the Government group underlined the benefits the European Exchange of Social Security (EESSI) system would bring. This system is now in production and all the 32 participating countries (EU + UK, NO, IS, CH and LI) are using it for their digital exchanges.