Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-03-13-Speech-3-197"
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"en.20020313.8.3-197"2
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".
Mr President, on 6 February 2002 the Commission presented to the Council a proposal for a regulation to extend the provisions of Regulation (EEC) No 1408/71 to nationals of third countries who, solely as a result of their nationality, are not covered by those provisions. The said proposal is based on paragraph 4 of Article 63 of the EC Treaty.
Nationals of candidate countries who become Community nationals purely as a result of accession will be included, by virtue of that accession, within the scope of Regulation (EEC) No 1408/71. The possible exceptions to this principle, which could take the form, for example, of transitional periods, will be determined within the framework of the accession agreements, which are currently under negotiation.
The Council has agreed on the possibility of using paragraph 4 of Article 63 as a legal basis, as the Commission proposed. In accordance with the provisions of paragraph 4 of Article 63, the Council will have to adopt measures which define the conditions under which nationals of third countries, who reside legally in a Member State, may reside in other Member States.
The Council considers that Article 42 of the EC Treaty, interpreted in the light of the judgements of the Court of Justice – in particular the judgement handed down in the Khalil case C-95/99 – does not seem to offer a sufficient legal basis for this extension. In fact, Mr President, it can be deduced from the Khalil judgement that the Court has not criticised the inclusion of stateless persons and refugees in Regulation (EEC) No 1408/71, based on Article 51 – currently Article 42 – of the EC Treaty, solely insofar as it involves a small category of people, in relation to which the Member States have made international commitments. In fact, the Court decided as follows: “The Council cannot be criticised for having, in the exercise of the powers which have been conferred on it under Article 51 of the EEC Treaty, also included stateless persons and refugees resident on the territory of the Member States in order to take into account the abovementioned international obligations of those States.
As the Advocate General pointed out in paragraph 59 of his Opinion, ‘coordination excluding stateless persons and refugees would have meant that the Member States, in order to ensure compliance with their international obligations, had to establish a second coordination regime designed solely for that very restricted category of persons’.
Therefore, the Council believes that the applicable procedure for adopting a decision should be the one laid down in the EC Treaty. If the legal basis adopted for extending coordination to third-country nationals turns out to be paragraph 4 of Article 63, the Council will have to give its opinion in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 67.
In relation to border workers, the Council has reached an agreement in principle in the field of sickness and unemployment benefits according to which the situation of former border worker pensioners will have to be studied. According to the provisions of the current Regulation, the border worker may receive healthcare in the territory of the competent State, but does not enjoy this right as a pensioner. For reasons of continuity, so that treatments already started may continue, the former border worker should be allowed to continue to receive sickness benefits in the territory of the State in which they formerly worked.
Finally, with regard to the unemployed worker, who during their last job resided in the territory of a Member State other than the competent State, the main objective is to incorporate them as best as possible into the labour markets. Furthermore, it will be appropriate to guarantee the social protection of the unemployed while bearing in mind the financial aspects of the issue and guaranteeing effective control.
As regards the relationship between taxation and social security, this is an issue which essentially falls within the competence of the Member States and not the Union.
It should be stressed that, in a general sense, the guidelines for employment for 2002 draw attention to the need to adapt the tax and benefit structures in such a way that they do not have a negative effect on participation in active life, particularly in relation to women."@en1
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