The CJEU and EFTA Court Rulings on Social Security Coordination in a Comparative Perspective

This article is a presentation of a legal report published in February 2024, comparing the rulings of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the EFTA Court on social security coordination. Over the years, the CJEU has ruled on a large number of social security issues, thus covering most legal aspects of the coordination. The EFTA Court, on the other hand, has ruled on 18 cases of social security coordination in total since it was established in 1994. An analysis of all rulings shows that most of them follow the same line as rulings of the CJEU in comparable cases, while some add new elements and deal with questions the CJEU has not so far been asked to rule on. Some could even be seen as going into another direction than the rulings of the CJEU. In this article, two examples of the analyses are included. The first example is a ruling on a regional family benefit, while the second is a ruling on sickness benefits that partly deal with a question that the CJEU has not yet been asked to rule on. Finally, these different analyses are evaluated from a cross-cutting perspective.