It’s always nice to get financial support (e.g. family allowances), and some of us can get it from either our institution or a national authority. While this is a fortunate situation, it is quite clear that you should not be paid twice for the same request, whether that is for your medical expenses or allowances for your children. The staff regulations are quite clear in this respect, and we all have to declare any allowances received from national sources (check out our IDOC article).
What is less obvious is the sequence in which you should request allowances. The Commission bases its approach on Court decision 07/05/1987[*], which states that EU allowances are complementary to national ones i.e. that they ‘sit on top of’ the national allowances.
This 1987 court decision condemned Belgium for not providing allowances to EU officials on the basis that the officials could get those allowances from their EU institution (instead of providing the national allowances, and then letting the EU institution reduce its payments accordingly).
The 1987 court decision is far from clear concerning any obligation to request national allowances, but the Commission is applying this principle consistently on all its sites:
- first, you have to try to get the national allowances in the country where you work,
- then (and only then) you ask for the Commission allowances.
You must show that you have tried to claim national allowances (even if they were denied). Taking this approach to the extreme, you could be asked to prove that you have not only tried in your work country and/or country of residence, but also in your country of origin, in countries where you have a passport, in countries where you lived beforehand, … in any country in the world.
While this approach is arguable, take note that the Commission is asking some colleagues at random to prove that they tried to get national allowances in order to keep the institution ones. It looks like this is not a random check but rather targeting those who might have the possibility to get national allowances, for instance, if your partner works in a private company or in the national administration. Check the data in your profile is correct: there are cases of colleagues who were contacted because their partners were incorrectly encoded in Sysper as national workers.
Without accepting that the Commission is taking the right approach, Generation 2004 has asked the PMO to clarify how they interpret the rules and define clearly where the limits are, for instance, providing guidelines and FAQs. This is particularly important for colleagues in the EEAS/delegations who might have multiple national authorities to deal with both simultaneously and throughout a career, adding complexity to the ‘business as usual’ family admin done by colleagues within the EU.
The Commission could be right or not in its interpretation. The only way to know definitively whether the Commission is right is to go again to court. It’s probably cheaper and less time consuming for all of us to check whether we can get national allowances, particularly if your have a partner who works outside your institution.
Have you been in a similar situation? If so, please contact us!
[*] See Also ECLI:EU:T:2014:1084 (French only) and a 2016 final German court judgement (German only) which refers to Curia C-189/85. Here’s eTranslation.
