Modernised EU Social Security Coordination
one year later - Looking forward
Conference of the
Hungarian Presidency of the Council of the European Union
Gödöllő, 28-29 April 2011
Carlo Caldarini, project manager Tesse: Transnational Exchanges on Social Security in
Europe
Mr Carlo Caldarini represented “Inca-Cgil”, a transnational no-profit organization created by
Cgil, the largest Italian trade union representing six million workers and pensioners. Inca-Cgil
was created in 1946, and it is funded by compulsory social security contributions of all Italian
workers. It deals with the protection of individuals irrespective of their affiliation to trade
unions and of whether they are active on the labour market or not. It is present in 30 countries
throughout the world in different European countries and in North and Latin America,
Australia and North Africa. In addition, in 2004 it set up and Observatory on European social
policies based in Brussels (www.osservatorioinca.org).
The focus their activity is social security and free movement of people, particularly with
respect to Italian migrants abroad or people who have spent part of their working activity in
Italy. They give individual advice and legal support to 2 million people each year on average,
as regards social rights, pension, family allowances, medical care, residence permit,
calculation of the periods during which contributions were paid etc. The typical situation they
address is multiple migrations with an Italian element coupled frequently with bad health
condition (occupational disease) and with difficulties of the person concerned to understand
official documents.
Mr Caldarini emphasised that the existence of rights in national or in European law was in
vain if that right would not be accessible by the persons in practice. Inca-Cgil helps people to
avail themselves of the benefits that are due to them by being familiar with Italian social
security law and social security systems in other countries to which the person in question has
affiliation, including the rules on social security coordination. This is a type of knowledge
which is not provided by schools or universities as such.
Mr Caldarini stressed that the provision of information is determined by the needs of the
target groups. In order to understand what the needs are, it shall be understood how these
needs have changed throughout the years and in keeping with the evolution of the labour
market in general. These are very much in tune with the developments in terms of social
changes in Europe, too.
Mr Caldarini differentiated three distinct target groups. The first and most important category
of people has very low levels of education, emigrated in the fifties at a time which was based
on very close family ties. These people had fairly standard jobs, contracts for full-time
employment and they paid compulsory social security contributions. The main issue for these
persons is to claim old-age pensions, and other forms of benefit related to occupational
disease or illness.
Another category is the one of third-country migrants. Mr. Caldarini mentioned Northern
African persons who worked in Italy and do therefore have a link with the Italian social
security system, but now migrate everywhere else in Europe because of the economic
recession. These persons come along to Inca-Cgil, because they need support in order to
access the social security scheme of the competent State where they currently reside (for
example by calculating or totalizing periods during which their contribution were paid, etc.).
The third category of people has much higher levels of education, they have European
mindset, they know languages, and they do not have a territorial-based social capital or family
network. They are the “Facebook-generation” of the 21st century, they have a completely
different channel of communication, solidarity as traditionally thought is very often lacking.
These people usually have atypical jobs, they do not have permanent contracts for full-time
employment, and often there is no obligation to pay social security contributions. These
people are capable to seek for information by themselves concerning their rights, but for many
of them social security is often too complex or inaccessible. They are already poorly protected
in the country of origin, and when these people emigrate elsewhere they certainly find out that
the whole system of coordination of social security has not been construed to cover people
like them. He noted the example of Italian workers with “project-contract”: albeit this
category of workers has some limited rights related to unemployment, these rights cannot be
exported to another European country because of the rather atypical structure of that job.
Apart from the above mentioned three categories, there are many other types of workers, less
disadvantaged, with very different needs such as international institutions’ officials. For
instance, Mr Caldarini stressed that half of the EU officials work under temporary contract.
They usually ask questions with regards to their social security contributions and how the
proper calculations have to be done.
Mr Caldarini underlined that the individual approach is the policy of Inca-Cgil. They are
problem-oriented, but there has to be human contact, a human being there providing
information. Therefore they are not a call-centre. There are offices with people in it, and
people come along and visit them in Belgium, in France, in the UK, in Luxembourg,
Slovenia, Croatia, Spain, Sweden and Denmark, Switzerland and Italy, etc.
Eventually, Mr. Caldarini concluded, the prior observation of concrete and individual matters
should become an asset in the European legislative process. Perhaps, the voice of the civil
society, and a bottom-up experience, would serve indeed to prevent the subsequent
identification of problems that arise after the implementation of top-down directives.