Politicised at Home but not in Council: The European Coordination of Social Security Systems

After seven years of negotiations, the European Parliament and the Council have yet to agree on the reform of one of the most essential regulations facilitating cross-border worker mobility in the EU: the Coordination of Social Security Systems (EC 883/2004). The lack of agreement remains puzzling, as all negotiating partners are generally in favour of the reform. Similar proposals on social policy, such as the Posting of Workers Directive or the Minimum-wage Directive, were also challenging to achieve but could be agreed upon. This article tests whether “unpolitics”—a destructive approach by populist governments in the Council to undermine EU policymaking—is the reason for the persisting deadlock on the file. The central finding of this article is that the interplay of populism and the status of member states as sending or receiving workers shape unpolitical behaviour. Contrary to expectations, unpolitics is largely absent in the behaviour of populist and non-populist governments. Unpolitical behaviour does not promise high gains for the populist governments from Central and Eastern Europe because these member states send workers. The smooth functioning of the freedom of workers is essential for them and their national discourses do not discuss the freedom of movement in the context of welfare chauvinism. Welfare chauvinism is much stronger in countries that receive workers, however, populists were not in power in these member states and therefore there was no unpolitical behaviour. The findings show that unpolitical behaviour is not used by mainstream governments, not even when it would seem likely from the nature of the policy issue. This article highlights that the probability of unpolitical behavior is influenced not only by the nature of the policy issue itself but also by domestic institutional and structural factors, as well as the national discourse.