[emj]

As is stated below countries with similar systems cooperate easier, Scandinavia, Germany, Netherlands are more or less automatic. This is slowly getting better, EU is working on it. Some key words: EESSI with RINA (stands for reference implementation..), and more generally "single digital gateway eu". The pessimist in me says that it will not be done for all countries with in 20 years, unless we give some countries lots of infrastructure for free.

[GekkePrutser]

Ah ok I've not seen the benefits of this. I'm from the Netherlands but lived in Ireland and Spain. I don't think they have these setups.

But I think this needs much more priority than the 'one market' benefits for big business they're working on. It's really a mess if you move around in the EU now, it's not at all like in America.

They should fix the voting too: Right now as an expat I can only vote for my home country which has zero bearing on the country I live in :/ And changing nationalities takes 10+ years.

For other stuff like health I don't mind as much (especially as Spain has a much better state health system than the Netherlands' privatised crap :) )

[emj]

These are the rules for elections in Sweden; one year until you can vote in local elections, five years for national elections. You should always research this when entering a new country for work, applying for citizenship is usually a very rigid process, and it will depend on the time you send in you application. I do not know if these rules are the same all over EU.

About cooperation between countries; At least the gears are turning, even if it is not somethings that is high on the political agenda. The biggest issue is to have a central database that maps one identity in one country to another. We have not even figured out Inter-country Electronic IDs (via EIDAS) yet, there is no way to even do a manual match of identities between countries using eID. That makes it impossible for you to log on and check your pensions if you work in the wrong country.