EU Parliament Approves Toughest A1 Posting Rules in a Decade

The European Parliament adopted its first-reading position on 7 July 2026 for the most significant overhaul of EU posted-worker social security rules since Regulation (EC) No 883/2004 took effect. The reform, agreed provisionally by Parliament and Council negotiators on 22 April 2026 after nearly a decade of talks, rewrites how employers file A1 certificates and how long a posted worker can remain outside home-country social security jurisdiction.

The measure still needs formal adoption by both the Council and Parliament before publication, and the new provisions apply 24 months after the regulation enters into force — giving employers a runway, but not an indefinite one, to update internal processes.

What Has Changed

The reform amends Regulation (EC) No 883/2004 and its implementing Regulation (EC) No 987/2009. Four changes matter most for employers running cross-border assignments:

• Prior A1 filing becomes mandatory. Under current practice, employers can often regularise an A1 certificate after a posting has already started. Under the revised rules, the A1 application must be submitted before the posting begins — with no fixed deadline, only a requirement that it precede departure. The one exception: activities that are genuinely business trips (meetings, training, conferences, no service provision) or postings of no more than three consecutive days within a 30-day window, outside the construction sector.
• Minimum prior affiliation triples. A posted worker must now have been covered by home-country social security for at least three consecutive months immediately before the posting — up from one month under the current rules.
• A two-month cooling-off period is now written into the text. Once a posting reaches the 24-month cap, at least two months must pass before the same worker — or a replacement performing the same assignment — can be posted again to that country under home-country coverage. An interruption of less than two months does not break continuity of the posting.
• The 24-month cap applies to the assignment, not just the individual. If one posted worker is replaced by another on the same project, the total combined posting period across both workers still cannot exceed 24 months.

The construction sector loses every short-trip exemption: prior A1 filing applies to all construction postings regardless of duration, given what the Council's proposal describes as a persistently high risk of irregularities in that sector.

What This Means for HR and Mobility Teams

Employers that currently treat A1 filing as a formality handled after deployment will need to rebuild that workflow around a pre-departure gate. Missing the prior filing does not strip a posted worker of home-country coverage outright — the substantive social security entitlement is protected — but it does expose the employer to administrative sanctions in the host state and triggers a slower, retroactive assessment process involving both the home and host country authorities.

The three-month affiliation rule also changes workforce planning for newly hired staff who are recruited specifically to be posted abroad: under the revised text, they must already be covered by the sending state's social security system from the start of their employment, which affects how quickly a new hire can be deployed cross-border.

Because the 24-month cap now follows the assignment rather than the individual, organisations running long, multi-phase projects with rotating posted staff — common in construction, engineering, and IT implementation — will need to track cumulative posting duration at the project level, not just per employee.

Action Steps

1. Map every current and planned posting against the new three-month prior-affiliation threshold before scheduling a departure date.
2. Build a pre-departure checkpoint into the mobility workflow so A1 applications are filed before, not after, the employee leaves.
3. Flag any assignment with worker rotation (one posted employee replacing another on the same project) and track combined duration against the 24-month cap at the assignment level.
4. For construction-sector postings specifically, remove any reliance on short-trip exemptions — prior filing now applies regardless of trip length.
5. Review recruitment pipelines for roles hired specifically for posting, to confirm social security coverage starts on day one of employment, not on the day of departure.

"Sources: KPMG GMS Flash Alert 2026-120, "European Union – Proposed Posting Rules Tighten A1 Certificate Compliance" — 6 May 2026; European Parliament first-reading adoption of Regulation 883/2004 amendments — 7 July 2026."