site.btaParliament Revises Social Insurance Code to Enhance Worker Mobility in EU

Sofia, May 23 (BTA) - Bulgaria's Parliament passed conclusively amendments to the Social Insurance Code transposing Directive 2014/50/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 April 2014 on minimum requirements for enhancing worker mobility between Member States by improving the acquisition and preservation of supplementary pension rights.

The amendments provide for a maximum waiting period of up to six months after which employers, in their capacity as social insurance contributors, will be obliged to start paying contributions to a supplementary voluntary retirement insurance fund under occupational schemes for a newly appointed employee or a person with whom a contract commissioning management and control has been concluded.

So far the Code did not specify a waiting period, which enabled employers to apply unjustifiably long waiting periods within which newly appointed workers and newly contracted managers were not insured at supplementary voluntary retirement insurance funds.

The amendments enter into force as from May 21, 2018, the deadline by which Bulgaria was supposed to transpose the Directive.