Les travailleurs frontaliers lorrains

In a context of expansion of the European Union and intensification of mobilities within the European area, this article examines the specific form of employment constituted by cross-border working, which concerns a growing number of people in the SaarLorLux Greater Region.

The first part of the article looks at the phenomenon of cross-border working and starts by presenting the geographical setting for the study: the cross-border area in the SaarLorLux Greater Region, which is seen as a laboratory for European integration within which several elements (such as geographical proximity, common languages, the history of industry and mining, etc.) favour the development of cross-border working. In 2005, the Greater Region accounted for 40% of the flows of cross-border workers in the fifteen member states of the EU at the time (OIE, 2005). Different issues around cross-border working are presented, in particular its forms (types of contracts, etc.) and its spatial dimensions (travel, residential mobility, etc.) in spite of the difficulties posed by the lack of harmonised data emphasised by the authors.

The second part of the article begins with an explanation of the evolution of the flows and the structuring of the phenomenon in the Greater Region. Then it addresses legal standardisation through the tax-related and social definitions of cross-border working. Because the cross-border worker, defined by the fact of being resident and working in different States, is a "hybrid circulating between two types of economy, two types of legislation and often two types of culture" (Kessler, 1991). The definition may be different depending on whether the cross-border worker is considered from the point of view of the social security or tax systems. From the social security point of view, the definition of the cross-border worker is provided by European Regulation No. 1408/71/EEC and its implementing Regulation No. 574/72/EEC, which date from the early 1970s and have been amended since (by Regulation No. 883/2004/EC which came into force on 1 May 2010). For the taxation aspects, it is bilateral tax agreements between countries that avoid double taxation of cross-border workers. But cross-border working also reveals the current limits of European coordination. There are some thorny points in the status of the cross-border worker: retirement age or recognition of invalidity vary considerably from country to country and cause problems for those who have had a mixed career (i.e. jobs in different countries).

Finally, the last part, which mainly consists of figures, describes the profiles of cross-border workers and stresses the wide variety of profiles within the same country of work, but especially according to the countries of work (geographical specialisation): the profiles in the Saarland are more industrial, those in Luxembourg more service-oriented.