Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Buscombe on 7 January (HL12466), with which EU countries the UK does not have reciprocal arrangements covering the annual uprating of State Pensions in the EU to which they will revert if the UK leaves the EU; and with which of those countries they have entered negotiations for post-Brexit arrangements to replace the European Union Pensions Directive.

The UK has seventeen reciprocal social security agreements with EU Member States which are in use between some or all of the Crown Dependencies and the relevant EU country which provide for reciprocal uprating of state pension. The EU countries are: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden. In the event the UK leaves without a withdrawal agreement, the UK will keep the role of pre-existing Reciprocal Agreements with individual Member States under review. Whether these come back into force will be subject to discussion and agreement between the UK and the relevant EU Member State.

There are ten EU countries where there is no reciprocal social security agreement in place. Those countries are: Bulgaria, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.

The UK government has taken the necessary steps to protect the rights of citizens through legislation and set out the measures it will take in a no deal scenario. The measures are based on the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement in the policy paper: “Citizens’ Rights - EU citizens in the UK and UK nationals in the EU” dated 6 December 2018. For social security arrangements, the UK will have retained EU law allowing the UK to apply the current social security coordination rules to protect those in receipt or entitled to a UK State Pension or benefit, including where they live in the EU. This will apply equally to citizens from all EU Member States. In a no deal scenario, we will uprate the UK State Pension for those living in the EU in 2019-20, with a view to securing continued reciprocal social security arrangements in future.