Impact of European Union Law on National Family Benefits

The debate on cross-border child benefits and a change in the German practice of granting child benefits to migrant workers were the initial impetus for undertaking a study on current developments in child benefit law with a focus on the interaction between European and domestic law. For some time now, various EU states have been advocating to link cross-border child benefit levels to the cost of living of the child’s place of residence. This proposal regularly fails due to the resistance of the European Commission. Infringement proceedings were initiated against Austria, which introduced such "indexation" of child benefits in 2019. Germany in turn increasingly relied on de facto restrictions to contain the costs of child benefit payments abroad, in particular by a law against illegal employment and social security fraud that was adopted in 2019. Whether or not these changes in German law are contradicting the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of nationality under EU law is currently an open question, and will be part of the further course of the investigation which will expand also on child benefits in other EU countries.