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Bilateral social security agreements and pensions portability: A study of four migrant corridors between EU and non‐EU countries
Author(s) -
Holzmann Robert
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
international social security review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.349
H-Index - 28
eISSN - 1468-246X
pISSN - 0020-871X
DOI - 10.1111/issr.12110
Subject(s) - software portability , bureaucracy , european union , social security , business , profit (economics) , work (physics) , public economics , economic growth , political science , economics , economic policy , politics , programming language , mechanical engineering , computer science , microeconomics , law , engineering
The article summarizes four corridor studies on bilateral social security agreements (BSSAs) between four European Union (EU) members that were undertaken to assess their working and the establishment of benefit portability. BSSAs between migrant‐sending and migrant‐receiving countries are seen as the most important instrument to establish portability of social security benefits for internationally mobile workers. Yet, only about 23 per cent of international migrants profit from BSSAs and their functioning has been little analyzed and even less assessed. The four corridors studied (Austria‐Turkey, Germany‐Turkey, Belgium‐Morocco, and France‐Morocco) were selected to allow for comparison of both similarities and differences in experiences. The evaluation of these corridors’ BSSAs was undertaken against a methodological framework and three selected criteria: fairness for individuals, fiscal fairness for countries, and bureaucratic effectiveness for countries and migrant workers. The results for pension portability suggest that the investigated BSSAs work and overall deliver reasonably well on individual fairness. The results on fiscal fairness are clouded by conceptual and empirical gaps. Bureaucratic effectiveness would profit from information and communication technology‐based exchanges on both corridors once available.