Social rights: How administrations deal with cross-border workers

July 2010 saw the start of a decade-long legal battle against the reform of financial aid for higher education initiated by the then Minister for Higher Education, François Biltgen. What is less well known is that the challenge was launched during a legal seminar organised by the TRESS (Training and Reporting on European Social Security) network, which brings together independent experts on social security from every EU Member State. "There were about twenty of us", recalls Nicole Kerschen, a lawyer, political scientist and honorary researcher at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (France), and former TRESS expert for Luxembourg. "The trade unions began to demand that the children of cross-border workers should be entitled to study grants on the same basis as the children of residents. The Commission, which was more aggressive at the time, jumped on the bandwagon and asked for information on this reform. The unions realised that their demands had not fallen on deaf ears and took legal action."

A few months later, the Commission issued a reasoned opinion against the Grand Duchy, and in 2013 it was the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) that ruled that the reform was discriminatory in the Giersch ruling (which the Journal has previously reported on in detail).