Brussels wants to digitize social security procedures between EU countries

The European Commission has proposed this Wednesday to digitize the majority of processes related to social security to improve information exchanges between national institutions and speed up cross-border recognition processes with the aim of reducing bureaucracy and ‘paperwork’ and reducing difficulties for Europeans who live, work or travel outside your country.

“All citizens of the European Union have the right to travel, work and live in another EU country,” said the Commission’s Economic Vice-President and Head of Trade, Valdis Dombrovskis. Although it has recognized that there are “interoperability problems between different social security systems that make it difficult for national authorities to access data and share it.”

Dombrovskis has highlighted that every year 3.6 million applications for proof of social security coverage are requested in cross-border situations, a process that “often takes time, since these procedures depend on physical presence and paper documents”.

For this reason, Brussels has proposed working together with the Member States to put an end to all this and move to digitization, which is “the key to making the EU’s national social security systems more automated, interoperable and integrated.”

As part of the process, the Commission proposes the creation of a Single Digital Portal, ensuring full online access to key administrative procedures by the end of this year.

In addition, to make the handling of cross-border social security cases between institutions more efficient, the Community Executive wants the Member States to speed up the implementation of the Electronic Exchange of Social Security Information System, which replaces paper exchanges between national institutions of social Security.

“It should be fully operational throughout Europe by the end of 2024,” stressed the commissioner, who wants to advance the introduction of the EU’s digital wallet to allow citizens to carry digital versions of their social security documents.

Source: dpa

(Reference image source: Alexander Lallemand, Unsplash)

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