Publication: Do Bilateral Social Security Agreements Deliver on the Portability of Pensions and Health Care Benefits?: A Summary Policy Paper on Four Migration Corridors between EU and Non-EU Member States
Date
2016-05
ISSN
Published
2016-05
Author(s)
Abstract
This policy paper summarizes four
corridor studies on bilateral social security agreements
(BSSAs) between four European Union (EU) member and two
non-member states, draws conclusions on their results, and
offers recommendations. 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 percent 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
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.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Holzmann, Robert. 2016. Do Bilateral Social Security Agreements Deliver on the Portability of Pensions and Health Care Benefits?: A Summary Policy Paper on Four Migration Corridors between EU and Non-EU Member States. Social Protection and Labor Discussion Paper;No. 1605. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/24731 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”