Dear trESS friends,

It is with pleasure that I present to you our October trESS e-newsletter. Approaching the end of 2012, we are happy to inform you about our project and about the latest developments in the field of EU social security coordination.

As to the activities of the project, all the planned trESS 2012 seminars have already taken place and, to our great delight, these seminars were all considered very instructive and fruitful. At the same time and as usual, different reports will be finalised in the coming weeks under the reporting and analytical branch of the project. Two of these reports (‘The coordination of unemployment benefits’ and ‘The coordination of benefits with activation measures’) will be presented at the coming December meeting of the Administrative Commission. You will find the fruit of this work on our website. New topics for reports in 2013 are already on the radar. We would also like to remind you to take a look at our renewed website and to keep inviting your colleagues to join our social media platforms if they are interested in EU social security coordination.

This newsletter also features a lot of news from the Commission, predominantly with regard to several seminars and conferences related to the topic of social security coordination. As to the activities of the European Court of Justice, we can offer you a summary of two recent ECJ cases. Both cases deal with the determination of the applicable legislation and in both of them the ECJ gives preference to the real factual situation of the migrant workers concerned as opposed to legislative or contractual fictions.

Taking a look inside the walls of the European Commission, Ms Marzena Matyja was prepared to talk to us about the most recent developments with regard to the coordination of health care. It is striking how many collateral topics have to be dealt with in that domain, for instance the implementation of the Patient Mobility Directive or the coordination of long-term care.

Finally, we are proud to present to you our new Social Security Coordination Literature Corner, the ‘SSC Literature Corner’, as a new section in the trESS e-newsletter. In this section, we will provide you a selection of recent publications in the field of social security coordination. This will ensure you are always up to date on academia’s view on several related topics.

I wish you a very pleasant read and I am looking forward to addressing you again in our next and last newsletter of 2012.

Kind regards,

Yves Jorens
Project Director