Today, if you live in France, Spain or any neighboring country and work in Switzerland with a G permit, and you are unemployed, the country that manages and pays your unemployment benefits is your country of residence, not Switzerland. This is how the current European regulation on social security coordination works. The official logic is that the State of residence assumes the burden. The paradox is evident: Switzerland collects unemployment insurance contributions from the frontier worker for years, and it is France or Spain that finally pays the benefits if that worker loses his job. That currently generates a surplus of about 300 million francs annually for Swiss unemployment insurance. Not bad at all.
The reform that is advancing in Brussels wants to change that logic at its root. From its entry into force, anyone who has worked in Switzerland for at least 22 weeks would be entitled to collect unemployment directly in Switzerland, with benefits calculated according to Swiss legislation, which can mean up to two years of coverage based on the Swiss salary. For the frontier worker that can mean considerably higher benefits than he would receive in France. For Switzerland it represents an estimated cost of between 600 and 900 million francs per year. The 21 member states that support the reform have already approved the text in the European Parliament's employment committee. Except for unforeseen circumstances, it will go to a plenary vote in July.
What should be borne in mind is that this reform is not yet in force, and that its entry into force is linked, among other things, to the new bilateral agreements between Switzerland and the EU, which require the explicit consent of Bern. It's not something that happens tomorrow. But for someone who lives across the border and works here, the coming change has a concrete impact: within a few years, if you lose your job, it could be the Swiss unemployment fund that handles your case, rather than the French Pôle Emploi or the Spanish SEPE. Two very different benefit systems. And then they say that the European bureaucracy is complicated.