Brussels wants the A1 form in a digital wallet and sharper enforcement from the ELA

The European Commission adopted the fair labour mobility package on 15 September: a communication and five legislative proposals. Two of them go straight to the daily life of anyone running international transport.

The A1 is the first document to go digital

The European Social Security Pass (ESSPASS) will allow social security documents to be requested and received entirely online, including the European Health Insurance Card and the portable document A1 for posted workers — the one that proves where contributions are paid. Through the EU Digital Identity Wallet, a driver will be able to store it and present it on a phone, and the authority asking for it will be able to verify it on the spot.

The timetable is set out in the press release: digitalisation is phased and starts with the A1, one year after the ESSPASS Regulation enters into force. The European Health Insurance Card and other documents follow within three years.

The Commission estimates that faster cross-border verification will save, over twelve years, up to €64 million for businesses, €69 million for healthcare providers and €72 million for labour inspectorates, and that digital signatures will avoid up to €277 million in fraud.

The ELA gains resources, not inspection powers of its own

The proposal on the European Labour Authority gives it, according to the press release, the capacity to provide risk assessment that helps national inspectorates target their controls, dedicated national inspection liaison officers, and a simplified mediation procedure to settle cross-border disputes between Member States. The mandate is extended to tackling abuses against third-country nationals working in the EU and to combatting illegal employment.

It is worth reading closely: the Commission’s text does not create inspections run by the ELA itself, nor does this proposal give it standalone access to transport enforcement databases. What changes is the ELA’s ability to point national inspectorates at the right places — and road transport has for years been among the sectors most targeted in those joint actions. The improvements, the Commission says, will only be felt between 2028 and 2030.

Non-EU qualifications: from 14 months to 4

The directive on qualifications of third-country nationals sets common recognition standards. Today those procedures take 14 months on average; the aim is to bring them down to 4 months, cutting the administrative cost of hiring by as much as half. In seven professions where EU-wide training standards already exist, recognition becomes automatic. Member States keep full control over who is admitted to their territory.

For regulated professions inside the EU, the recognition deadline drops from three months to five weeks, with a mandatory digital procedure.

The press release gives doctors, nurses, engineers and teachers as examples. It does not name road transport, and the driver CPC remains governed by Directive (EU) 2022/2561, outside this package. For hauliers recruiting outside the EU, the practical effect lies in workshop and structural trades, and in the general principle of shorter deadlines.

What changes today: nothing

These are proposals. They take effect only once adopted by the European Parliament and the Council and in force. No driver stops needing the A1 on paper this week, and none can yet show it on a phone.

What is worth tracking is the A1 deadline: it is the first document to be digitalised and the one most often demanded at the roadside from drivers working under posting rules. See also the driving and rest times guide and the country-by-country driving bans.