Nr 1 (4) 2008

Social Pol­icy

Migra­tions and their impact on social secu­rity scheme Peo­ple trav­el­ing; ben­e­fits transferred

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Table of Con­tents 1/2008 Eng­lish Edition

EDITORS NOTE – Gertruda Uścińska, Antoni Rajkiewicz
THE RIGHT OF MIGRANT WORKERS TO EQUAL TREATMENT – Andrzej Świątkowski
HARD WORKING IMMIGRANTS WELCOME: SOCIAL SECURITY FOR POLISH WORKERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM – Simon Roberts
FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT OF PERSONS AND SOCIAL SECURITY ENTITLEMENTS IMPACT – Gertruda Uścińska
THE SOCIAL DIMENSION OF EMIGRATION IN MOTHER COUNTRIES OF MIGRANTS – Stanisława Goli­nowska
POLES’ ECONOMIC MIGRATIONS AFTER THE EU ENLARGEMENT – Edward Marek
MIGRATION AND POLISH SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM IMPACT OF LABOUR SUPPLY CHANGES – Anna Ruzik
SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM COORDINATION – CONSEQUENCES FOR POLISH HEALTH CARE SYSTEM – Elż­bi­eta Czyżowska
COMMUNITY COORDINATION OF PENSIONS – Izabela Kryśpiak

EDITORS NOTE — Gertruda Uścińska (The Insti­tute of Labour and Social Stud­ies), Antoni Rajkiewicz (The Insti­tute of Social Pol­icy of the Uni­ver­sity of War­saw)
It is for the fifth time that the read­ers of ‘Social Pol­icy’ are given the issue devoted entirely to con­tem­po­rary transna­tional migra­tion. At the first time we dis­cussed the sub­ject in the third issue in 1995, with con­nec­tion to War­saw con­fer­ence by Inter­na­tional Labour Orga­ni­za­tion. In the fol­low­ing year, in the issue num­ber 11–12 we paid spe­cial atten­tion to the legal aspects of migra­tion processes as well as eco­nomic migra­tion to Ger­many. Issue 5–6 in the year 2000 dis­cussed above all the mul­ti­di­men­sional stud­ies on migra­tion con­ducted by the Insti­tute of Labour and Social Pol­icy, whereas issue 3 in 2004 pre­sented the com­plex­ity of the processes involved in migra­tion just few weeks before Poland’s acces­sion to the Euro­pean Union.
The cur­rent issue of our Pol­ish monthly con­cen­trates on legal aspects in gen­eral, and legal aspect of social secu­rity in par­tic­u­lar. In this area EU reg­u­la­tions are extremely rel­e­vant for the sta­tus of employ­ment of for­eign­ers. In the text on the right of migrant work­ers to equal treat­ment the author analy­ses the scope of duties under the Arti­cle 19 of the Euro­pean Social Chart and estab­lishes the stage of their imple­men­ta­tion in countries-signatories of the Chart. In par­tic­u­lar, the equal treat­ment of migrant work­ers with ref­er­ence to labour law, social insur­ance and fis­cal pol­icy is dis­cussed.
The sit­u­a­tion of Pol­ish migrant work­ers on British labour mar­ket is the cen­tral sub­ject of the sec­ond paper. The author presents, on the one hand, national reg­u­la­tions on employ­ment and their coun­ter­parts in Com­mu­nity law, and the hand, he exam­ines the actual sit­u­a­tion of Pol­ish migrant work­ers in the United King­dom. The impact of employ­ment on social secu­rity enti­tle­ments is also pre­sented as well as mis­in­for­ma­tion on the sub­ject in British mass-media. The exag­ger­ated and ill-informed opin­ions are con­trasted with reli­able facts and num­bers. In the con­clu­sion sec­tion the nec­es­sary actions are men­tioned that are vital for the improve­ment of the posi­tion of migrant work­ers and their impact on British social secu­rity scheme.
The scope of right of free­dom of move­ment and res­i­dence and its impact on reg­u­la­tions in the area of social secu­rity is exam­ined in the next paper. The author analy­ses Com­mu­nity reg­u­la­tions estab­lish­ing this scope, while tak­ing into account the con­se­quences of their imple­men­ta­tion for work­ers and other pro­fes­sional groups, as well as legal sit­u­a­tion of the fam­ily mem­bers. The prob­lems per­tain­ing to the imple­men­ta­tion of the pro­vi­sions laid down in Direc­tive 2004/83 are dis­cussed with ref­er­ence to the res­i­dence of EU cit­i­zens within the ter­ri­tory of another Mem­ber State and in con­nec­tion with the Com­mu­nity pro­vi­sions on social secu­rity co-ordination. The need to co-ordinate legal works that decide on the real dimen­sion of free­dom of move­ment of EU cit­i­zens is pos­tu­lated.
Social dimen­sion of migra­tion in the coun­tries of ori­gin (referred to also as ‘send­ing coun­tries’) was not, until recently, the sub­ject of com­pre­hen­sive analy­sis. There­fore, it is valu­able that the author of the next arti­cle dis­cusses this com­plex prob­lem. She pays atten­tion to the ben­e­fits of emi­gra­tion (e.g. remit­tances, improve­ment of human cap­i­tal), and sheds light on numer­ous dis­ad­van­tages (demo­graphic impact, fam­ily life, euro-orphans and oth­ers).
Pol­ish eco­nomic migra­tion after the acces­sion to the EU is the sub­ject of thor­ough analy­sis in the next paper. The author dis­cusses the rules of access to EU labour mar­kets and the actual usage of this law. The actual impact of restric­tions under the Acces­sion Treaty is con­sid­ered with regard to the real­iza­tion of the free­dom of move­ment. The ques­tions on the pos­si­ble return of migrants are raised.
From the eco­nomic point of view it is pos­si­ble to estab­lish the impact of migra­tion on Pol­ish social secu­rity scheme and to ver­ify how the change in sup­ply of work­force can influ­ence the financ­ing of the scheme. The author analy­ses the influ­ence of the change in work­force on pen­sion scheme, heath fund and social assis­tance. In the con­clu­sion it is stated that poten­tial effects on Pol­ish social secu­rity schemes might be pos­i­tive (e.g. migrant work­ers reduce pres­sure on the sum of salaries, sig­nif­i­cantly improve finan­cial con­di­tion of many house­holds) as well as neg­a­tive (e.g. smaller amount of con­tri­bu­tions, decreased num­ber of tax-payers).
In order to make use of the free­dom of move­ment migrant per­son needs pro­tec­tion within the frame­work of social secu­rity schemes. This pro­tec­tion is reg­u­lated by Com­mu­nity rules for co-ordination of social secu­rity schemes. Their aim is to ensure that the per­son who makes use of the right to free­dom of move­ment is not in a worse sit­u­a­tion than the one who spends whole life in one coun­try. The scope of rights with ref­er­ence to health ser­vices is pre­sented in the next text. The author presents also cur­rent legal and eco­nomic prob­lems per­tain­ing to the use of heath ser­vices by Pol­ish migrant work­ers when abroad in other EU Mem­ber States.
The next paper exam­ines the rules for the co-ordination of pen­sion scheme ben­e­fits. Legal issues are dis­cussed that refer to the imple­men­ta­tion of Com­mu­nity rules for co-ordination in Poland. Sta­tis­ti­cal data is pre­sented which illus­trates the num­ber of per­sons cov­ered by the scope of imple­men­ta­tion of co-ordination of pen­sion schemes.
On bal­ance, the reader receives an inter­est­ing review of mul­ti­fac­eted prob­lems being rel­e­vant to almost two and a half mil­lions of Pol­ish peo­ple who cur­rently reside abroad, and who, by means of their fam­ily rela­tions, are con­nected to one in every three house­holds in Poland. This points to the scale and impor­tance of transna­tional migra­tion from Poland. We encour­age you to read care­fully the texts pre­sented here. All com­ments, offers and ques­tions are welcome.

Con­trib­u­tors

SIMON ROBERTS – is a Spe­cial Lec­turer in the School of Soci­ol­ogy and Social Pol­icy at Not­ting­ham Uni­ver­sity. Before join­ing Not­ting­ham Uni­ver­sity he was Assis­tant Direc­tor at the Cen­tre for Research in Social Pol­icy at Lough­bor­ough Uni­ver­sity. He is the UK expert, vis­it­ing inter­na­tional expert and mem­ber of the think tank on the Euro­pean Commission’s Train­ing and Report­ing on Euro­pean Social Secu­rity net­work, a con­tribut­ing national expert on the Euro­pean Commission’s Obser­va­tory on Free Move­ment of Work­ers and was recently an expert assist­ing the Euro­pean Commission’s Euro­pean Research Area Group tasked with ‘Real­is­ing a sin­gle labour mar­ket for researchers’. He is a mem­ber of the Edi­to­r­ial Board of the Euro­pean Jour­nal of Social Secu­rity.

STANISŁAWA GOLINOWSKA – pro­fes­sor, spe­cial­ist in social pol­icy and the labour mar­ket; highly knowl­edge­able of social insur­ance sys­tems: retire­ment, dis­abil­ity and social wel­fare, health care. Has devel­oped work on poverty at the Insti­tute of Labour and Social Stud­ies. Has con­ducted many com­par­a­tive stud­ies. Has edited sev­eral UNDP reports on social devel­op­ment in Poland. Is now head of the Insti­tute of Pub­lic Health at Col­legium Medicum, Jagiel­lon­ian Uni­ver­sity, Cra­cow. She has done advi­sory work. In 1994–2005 she was a mem­ber of the Socio-economic Strat­egy Coun­cil. She has been on advi­sory mis­sions to Ukraine, Bul­garia, Mol­davia and Geor­gia. She co-operates with and sup­ports non­govern­men­tal organ­i­sa­tions. She is vice-president of the CASE Foun­da­tion Coun­cil. She has writ­ten and edited many books and over a hun­dred arti­cles in national and inter­na­tional jour­nals.

EDWARD MAREK – econ­o­mist and social pol­icy expert. For many years work­ing in Min­istry of Labour and Social Pol­icy. Took part in the prepa­ra­tion of legal acts in the area of social pol­icy, e.g. reg­u­lat­ing the scope and form of financ­ing of social activ­ity of enter­prises and local author­i­ties activ­i­ties in this area. He has been a researcher for many years in the Insti­tute of Labour and Social Stud­ies. In recent years he has worked on Pol­ish eco­nomic migra­tion to Ger­many, in par­tic­u­lar sea­sonal migra­tion and con­struc­tion work­ers employed within the frame­work of sea­sonal job con­tracts in RFN.

ANNA RUZIK – works as the assis­tant pro­fes­sor at the Insti­tute of Labour and Social Stud­ies. In 2004 she received Ph.D. in Eco­nom­ics at the War­saw School of Eco­nom­ics. Her research fields are mainly: labour eco­nom­ics, pen­sion sys­tems, and social pol­icy.

ELŻBIETA CZYŻOWSKA – Head of the Depart­ment of Co-ordination and Inter­na­tional Co-operation in the Depart­ment of Inter­na­tional Co-operation of National Health Fund. She has been work­ing on co-ordination of heath care sys­tems. Author of pub­li­ca­tions on co-ordination of social secu­rity schemes in the area of ben­e­fits in kind and co-author of mono­graphic work: “Pol­ish health care sys­tem after the acces­sion to the Euro­pean Union”, War­saw 2004.

IZABELA KRYŚPIAK – gen­eral expert in the Depart­ment of Pen­sions of For­eign Cen­tres of Social Insur­ance Insti­tu­tion. Her area of study cov­ers bilat­eral and Com­mu­nity co-ordination of pen­sion schemes. The co-author of pub­li­ca­tions on the sub­ject of co-ordination. In her writ­ings she deals mostly with co-ordination of pen­sion schemes pro­vi­sions and with their impact on Pol­ish leg­is­la­tion in the area of pen­sions from Social Insur­ance Fund.

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