The Portuguese-Spanish ‘Common Strategy on Cross-Border Development’ and Frontier Workers. A few years after.

The seminar was organised by MoveS in collaboration with its Portuguese national expert Mariana de Pinho da Silva Geraldo and its Spanish national expert, Dolores Carrascosa Bermejo. MoveS is an EC-funded network of independent experts from 32 European countries coordinated by Eftheia and Deloitte.

In 2018, Portugal and Spain agreed on a ‘Common Strategy on Cross-Border Development’. The Strategy aims to: foster cross-border work; identify indirect discrimination experienced by frontier workers; promote the coordination of authorities of both countries; and analyse the mechanisms for joint action deriving from the European Labour Authority. The Strategy is being implemented and an Institutional cooperation protocol relating to frontier workers from border territories was concluded in 2021 between the Portuguese and Spanish Ministries responsible for Labour, Social Security and Solidarity/Inclusion. A few years after the beginning of such an intensified cooperation, its achievements and challenges in different areas (i.e. posting, job seekers, social security coverage and social assistance rights in the host Member State, interinstitutional cooperation) was discussed. The seminar was also an opportunity to disseminate the results of such cooperation and to identify both its weaknesses and strengths to further improve cross-border cooperation and mobility between Portugal and Spain.