Legal Aspects of Cross-Border Rehabilitation to Work

Abstract

This paper describes the legal situation of European migrant workers who are in need of rehabilitation. For the sick or disabled migrant worker, living in one country and having his/her workplace in another, rehabilitation often raises complicated issues which have to be solved by an equally complex framework of legal rules. In this article, Sweden-Norway is used as a cross-border example to illustrate the problems faced by an insured person and by the social security administration during rehabilitation. The legal problems are basically attributable to differences between social security systems within the EU. Rehabilitation cases are complicated by the fact that the support an individual needs is often not a single benefit. Instead rehabilitation involves a variety of different benefits regulated by different legal instruments. EC Reg. 1408/71 aims to co-ordinate and safeguard the social security rights of migrant workers. However, legal rehabilitation tools, such as sickness and health care benefits, are co-ordinated according to different criteria and special rules covering rehabilitation are not found in the regulation. This leads to a situation where a migrant worker can have the right to cash benefits from one country and health care benefits from another. The result is sometimes confusing, both for the individual and for the administration. The article explores and analyses this confusing situation, paying special attention to the question of legal certainty for the migrant worker.