SOLVIT

SOLVIT is an informal network of 30 centres staffed by national civil servants, one per country (EU Member State plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway). Since 2002, SOLVIT helps people or businesses free-of-charge when their cross-border rights in the Single Market are breached by public authorities. SOLVIT looks for swift and pragmatic solutions to make sure the four freedoms of movement of people, services, goods and capital are upheld. It offers a faster, informal alternative to starting a court case, submitting a formal complaint to the European Commission or launching a petition.

There are always two SOLVIT centres working on a case, ensuring checks and balances in complaint-handling. The centres work together via an online database. People and businesses who encounter obstacles exercising their rights can seek help from their home SOLVIT centre (usually in their home country) via an online application. The home SOLVIT centre prepares the case and sends it to the SOLVIT centre in the country where the obstacle occurred (the lead SOLVIT centre). The lead SOLVIT centre then contacts the national authority that is the source of the obstacle to solve it.

Main messages:

• SOLVIT is an informal, free of charge, problem-solving network of the Commission, the EU and the EEA Member States. It assists citizens and businesses when their EU rights are breached by public authorities in another country.
• In 2024, SOLVIT proved again its important role in the fight against Single Market barriers for the benefit of many people and businesses.
• Compared to 2023, the number of cases increased sharply by 45%. In 2024, the total number of cases was 3 339.  
• The resolution rate fell to 77% due to a very high number of Greek systemic pension cases that cannot be resolved by SOLVIT. If these systemic cases are excluded, the overall resolution rate is high at 85%.
• Member States should continue to make sure that their SOLVIT centres are properly equipped and have sufficient authoritative power to influence national administrations, enough permanent staff, legal expertise or easy access to it. This is a key point for attention as a lack of capacity in one SOLVIT centre affects the whole network.
• In 2024, SOLVIT continued to work on better detection of the systemic cases (recurrent cases or cases due to a written national rule, as opposed to one-off individual cases) which cannot be effectively solved by the network. A newly developed IT application (in the IMI system) will ensure more transparency on those cases.
• It is essential that decision makers at national and EU level take swift and concrete steps to resolve the systemic cases identified by SOLVIT. This was also confirmed in Council Conclusions in May 2024.

During the reporting period (1 December 2023 – 30 November 2024), SOLVIT received 6,477 cases by citizens and businesses and accepted 3,339 cases falling in its remit. This corresponds to a significant increase compared to previous years (+45% in 2024). 

This is mostly due to a significant increase in the number of systemic cases compared to the previous two years received by SOLVIT Portugal (+73%), France (+77%) and Greece (+460%) as lead centres. Such rises are in part owned to, respectively, an increase in the number of Portuguese residence card cases, French unemployment benefits cases and Greek pension cases. The increase of Greek cases stems from a new agreement with the Greek pension administration regarding the acceptance of certain SOLVIT cases (communication of insurance periods). The French and Greek situation are also the reason why SOLVIT Bulgaria saw a significant increase (+255%) in the number of cases treated as home centre compared to the last two years (Bulgarians facing difficulties with Greek pension and French unemployment administrations).

Besides these specific situations, the SOLVIT centres with the greatest overall caseload both as lead and home centres remain France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Considering only caseload as SOLVIT lead centres, SOLVIT Italy (14% of all SOLVIT cases) and SOLVIT France (22% of all SOLVIT cases) remain by far the two centres with the highest workload having to contact their national authorities to solve obstacles.

In 2024, the number of business cases treated by SOLVIT increased (+20%) but their share in the overall SOLVIT caseloads remains low compared to citizens cases (about 6%). SOLVIT Cyprus, Germany, Lithuania, Luxembourg and Poland are the centres that received most of the requests for help by businesses in their country for obstacles they encounter in other Member States.

Finally, it should be reported that the European Commission provided 70 pieces of informal legal advice to SOLVIT centres to help them deal with complex cases (cases closed in the reporting period). This is a significant increase (+ 62%) compared to the last 2 years. The Commission provided such advice within an average of 29 days for 2024, which is 9 days faster than in 2023.

The majority of cases treated by SOLVIT still concern social security and free movement of people. In 2024, their number significantly increased compared to last year (50% for social security and 63% for free movement of people - see above about increases in systemic cases for SOLVIT Portugal, France and Greece in these areas of EU law).

Staffing in the national SOLVIT centres is a crucial part of the success of the SOLVIT network. However, despite their dedication, in some SOLVIT centres there is not enough staff for the workload, there is a high turnover or there is a lack of necessary expertise.

This has a very significant impact on the quality and timing of case handling, on interaction with applicants and on the overall efficiency of the network, reflecting negatively on SOLVIT's performance. This holds SOLVIT back from developing to its full potential.

The table reflects the staffing situation throughout the full reporting period. Situations may have improved at the end of the reporting period, but this only partly counts for the final score in this Scoreboard. In 2024, a lack of sufficient staffing was signalled for Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Germany, Norway and Poland. SOLVIT Germany was understaffed for most of the reporting period, but the situation has improved since September 2024.

Staffing situation throughout the full reporting period

Legend

Staffing assessment

• red = Below 0: urgent action needed
• yellow = Between 0-2: needs improvement
• green = Above (excluding 2): sufficient

The total staffing score (which covers the full reporting period and does not reflect the status quo at the end of the reporting year) is calculated on the basis of the following indicators:

• continuity of case handlers (at least one member of staff has been working in SOLVIT for more than 2 years);
• large part of case handling relies on long-term staff;
• sufficient staff for current caseload;
• no other tasks in parallel (or overriding SOLVIT tasks);
• SOLVIT centre always operational;
• staff engages in awareness-raising/outreach activities;
• staff available for policy development, training, etc.

Case-handling indicators

The 2013 SOLVIT Recommendation foresees time targets for SOLVIT internal procedures to treat a case. The timeliness of the actions taken by SOLVIT centres are highly dependent on staffing levels, significant increases in workload and the complex nature of the cases and might also depend on the responsiveness of the applicant, authorities, other SOLVIT centres and, in some cases, of the Commission.

2024 Member States resolution rate of SOLVIT cases

In its Communication ‘The Single Market at 30’, the European Commission proposed ‘to set a benchmark on SOLVIT with the aim of solving a minimum of 90% of the cases within 12 months in each Member State’. This means that, to calculate the success rate in the reporting period, account has been taken not only of all SOLVIT cases closed, but also of cases open for more than 12 months by a SOLVIT centre acting as lead centre (centre of the country where the obstacle is encountered).

SOLVIT is equipped to solve individual cases of misapplication of EU law. ‘Recurrent’ cases (happens numerous times) or ‘structural’ cases (where the obstacle results from a national rule), referred together as ‘systemic obstacles’, are difficult to be solved by an informal tool such as SOLVIT. These cases therefore negatively affect SOLVIT's functioning and success rate. Even if not solving them directly, SOLVIT does detect and monitor these systemic obstacles to the Single Market which must be addressed by Member States directly or by the Commission through its enforcement actions.

Success in meeting high resolution rates depends not only on the number of systemic cases but also on the willingness or possibility to cooperate of national authorities. In some instances, the lower resolution rate for some countries is indeed due to the fact that cases are linked to systemic obstacles that cannot be solved by SOLVIT (e.g., pensions in Greece, residence rights in Portugal and Sweden, unemployment benefits in France) or to difficulties faced by the lead centre in cooperating with national authorities (e.g., Belgium and the Netherlands).

That is why the success rate does not directly reflect SOLVIT centres’ performance. It should be seen as pointing at the respective Member State as it is the task of their national authorities, contacted by SOLVIT, to solve the cases.

SOLVIT’s average resolution rate remains impressive in 2024 at 85%, if systemic cases relating to Greek pensions, that cannot be solved by SOLVIT, are excluded from the calculations (otherwise it would be 77%).

It is also clear that there is no statistical relevance of the resolution rate for countries with a low caseload as lead centre (Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovenia are lead centres for 15 cases or less).

For more details by country, see the country data pages.

Legend

This table includes systemic cases that cannot be solved by SOLVIT and should be addressed by Member States.

To keep ensuring SOLVIT success,

Member States should:

• address systemic obstacles in the Single Market detected by SOLVIT in their country;
• ensure that their national SOLVIT centre have sufficient authoritative power to influence other national authorities and, in particular, that:
  • their national SOLVIT centre is adequately staffed;
  • their national SOLVIT centre has access to EU and national legal expertise.

SOLVIT centres should:

• increase as much as possible the efficiency and quality of case-handling;
• intensify cooperation with SMET (Single Market Enforcement Taskforce);
• intensify networking with national authorities.

The Commission plans to:

• finalise the revamping of SOLVIT database, update the case-handling manual and provide training on the new workflows;
• update SOLVIT business strategy;
• build-up the delivery of training in cooperation with the EU Academy;
• finalise the improved reporting on systemic obstacles in the Single Market detected by SOLVIT and keep addressing them in line with its enforcement priorities;
• strengthen cooperation with the ELA (European Labour Authority) to address systemic obstacles linked to labour mobility.

For examples of SOLVIT success stories: see SOLVIT website.