Member states of the EU are highly unequal in terms of wages levels, labour markets and social security. This has led to increasing and asymmetrical mobility of EU workers from East to West. Against this background, the rules for the freedom of movement of EU workers and their access to national welfare state systems are central questions among policy makers. While policy makers in some EU member states call for restrictions on EU workers’ access to social benefits, others reject policy change. What are the reasons for these diverse opinions?
As an example of this, the paper analyses positions of Western European states towards the proposal of the European Commission to reform the European coordination of social security which is negotiated since the end of 2016. The crucial problems of this reform can be seen on the discussion on the export of unemployment benefits. Although Western European states have all insurance-based and comprehensive unemployment systems, they represent conflicting opinions on the export of unemployment benefits.
To explain this, I conduct a comparative case study of Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany. Data was generated via expert interviews and policy documents. Results show that the diverging positions of policy makers and the inequalities between the three states can be explained by path dependencies and institutional features of the national unemployment systems. Also politicization plays a decisive role.
From the perspective of research on free movement and inequalities in the EU, the study emphasizes that despite a shared European coordination of social security, welfare systems of Western European states remain diverse and an unequal access of mobile workers to social security remains. Similarly, the paper demonstrates that socio-economic inequalities between member states and heterogenous welfare state characteristic impede the reform process of the European coordination of social security.
