Have you worked, lived in or just travelled to another EU Member State (or a European country covered by EU social security coordination rules)?

Institutions in those countries may need to coordinate to provide you with benefits or services that you are entitled to, or simply to determine which social security legislation you are subject to.

Those benefits or services could be related to the following branches of social security:

• sickness, maternity, and equivalent paternity benefits
• family benefits
• old-age pensions, pre-retirement, and invalidity benefits
• unemployment benefits
• survivor´s benefits and death grants
• benefits in respect of accidents at work and occupational diseases

To connect social security institutions across Europe to deal with your cases, the EESSI - Electronic Exchange of Social Security Information - system was put in place. The system interconnects, as of June 2023, around 3.400 institutions in 32 participating countries: the 27 EU Member States, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

EESSI is a decentralised IT system that helps social security institutions across the EU exchange information related to different branches mentioned above more rapidly and securely, as required by the EU rules on social security coordination.

Thus, while the system is used by institutions among themselves, you, as a citizen, benefit from these electronic exchanges as in the past. Before EESSI, those were paper based. The process was time-consuming, prone to errors and may have resulted in a loss of data or documents.

For a direct digital experience between a citizen and an institution in an EU country, another solution called European Social Security Pass, is being piloted and delivered its first results in 2022.

How EESSI works

All communication between national institutions on social security files are to take place through EESSI: social security institutions exchange structured electronic documents and follow commonly agreed procedures to process them. These documents are routed through EESSI to the correct destination in the right institutions in another Member State. Staff in social security institutions are able to find the correct destination in participating countries by consulting a public repository of national institutions.

Benefits of EESSI

Faster and more efficient information exchange between social security institutions benefits to mobile citizens

• EESSI speeds up exchanges between social security institutions on cases related to different branches of social security (such as unemployment, family, old-age pension, sickness benefits, accidents at work etc.). It allows them to handle individual cases more quickly, and helps make calculation and payment of benefits faster.
• This faster and more efficient exchange of social security information helps enhance the protection of the social security rights of citizens across borders.

More accurate data exchange between national authorities

• Social security institutions across the EU use standardised electronic documents translated into their own language, improving multilingual communication.
• EESSI optimises case handling, introducing standard electronic procedures to be followed by institutions. This helps ensuring that social security coordination rules are correctly applied.

Fight against fraud

• EESSI introduces safeguards to ensure that the data exchanged is correct and complete, helping institutions to combat fraud and error.

Collect statistics about social security coordination

• EESSI enables to collect statistics on the message exchanges between social security institutions.

Verification of social security rights

• Social security institutions across Europe can exchange relevant information also to verify the social security rights of mobile citizens.

And what about data protection and security?

• Both are key principles for the design and maintenance of the EESSI system and for the digitalisation of social security coordination in general.
• EESSI is a decentralized system which means there is no centralized database storing messages with citizens’ private data. Only the institutions in EESSI countries treating citizens’ cases have access to their data.
• EESSI uses a common secure infrastructure for cross-border data exchange between social security institutions. The messages are encrypted