Coronavirus and living or working across the border: social insurance does not change in principle

The government has taken temporary measures to ensure that the coronavirus does not spread further. Many people therefore have to work from home. For frontier workers this may mean that they work in a different country than usual. However, this particular situation has no consequences for the social security of frontier workers.

One system of social security in the EU
The basic principle of European Union legislation is that only one system of social security rules can apply to a citizen. Under normal circumstances, this means that a resident of Belgium, who only works in the Netherlands for a Dutch company, is covered by Dutch social security. However, when this frontier worker works from home, he also does work in Belgium. In that case, other rules would apply which could be detrimental to the frontier worker. For example, he or she may have a lower pension accrual due to the other social security rules.

No change in social insurance
Now that frontier workers are forced to work at home due to the corona crisis, this would have an unintended adverse effect on them. It has therefore been decided that the current measures have no effect on the social security rules for cross-border workers who do not have or will not have a new employer.

When does social insurance change?

The social security rules do change as a cross-border worker:

• did not have an employer, but start working for an employer in another Member State, or
• an employer, but changes to a new employer established in another Member State

A frontier worker is then insured (even while working from home) in the Member State where he or she will normally work for the new employer if the obligation to work at home has been lifted due to the corona virus.

Should the measures regarding the coronavirus take longer? And do these cause a change in social insurance at a later time? Then we report this on our website .