EU social security coordination overhaul moves to final approval, with A1 certificates becoming mandatory

Member-state representatives met on 23 September 2026 to confirm the compromise on reforming Regulation 883/2004, the instrument that coordinates social security across the EU, closing nearly a decade of negotiation. The European Parliament adopted the text on 7 July 2026.

Three changes bear directly on people who work across borders. Jobseekers will keep home-country unemployment benefit for six months rather than three. Posted workers will need three months’ prior affiliation to the sending state. And prior notification and an A1 certificate become mandatory, with an exemption for business trips and for work of up to three consecutive days within any thirty-day period. Construction is excluded from that exemption.

Why this matters

The A1 is the document that proves which country’s social security system you belong to. Making prior notification mandatory means the paperwork has to exist before the work happens, not afterwards, and the three-day exemption is narrow enough that anyone working repeatedly in another member state will be inside the requirement rather than outside it.

Most of the substantive provisions apply only twenty-four months after entry into force, so there is time. But if your working pattern involves short stints in other member states, the compliance burden is moving from retrospective to prospective, and that is a change in kind rather than degree.

What to watch

The Council’s formal adoption and the date of entry into force, which starts the twenty-four-month clock.