Unemployed as a Swiss cross-border worker: who pays?

A cross-border worker works in Switzerland, lives in an EU country and as a rule returns home every day, or at least once a week. While working you pay contributions to Swiss unemployment insurance. If you become fully unemployed, however, you make yourself available to the employment services of your country of residence and receive benefits under its law (Art. 65 (2) and (5)(a) of Regulation 883/2004). SECO confirms that the country of residence is responsible today.

If you live in France, France Travail pays; if you live in Germany, the Agentur für Arbeit. The same principle applies to cross-border workers from Italy or Austria: their country of residence pays.

Switzerland still contributes: it reimburses the country of residence for the benefits of the first three months, and five months if you worked in Switzerland for at least twelve of the last 24 months (Art. 65 (6) and (7)). That is a settlement between the states. It does not change your entitlement.

Partial or intermittent unemployment is different, for example short-time work or bad-weather stoppages in construction, as long as your employment contract continues. You then stay available to your Swiss employer and the Swiss employment services and receive benefits under Swiss law, as if you lived in Switzerland (Art. 65 (1) of Regulation 883/2004).

The country of residence calculates under its own rules, as if you had last worked under its law. For the amount, however, it takes into account the salary you earned in Switzerland (Art. 62 (3) of Regulation 883/2004). A high Swiss salary therefore feeds into the assessment, within the ceilings and rates of the country of residence.

In France, the unemployment insurance agreement of 15 November 2024 provided for a coefficient that would have scaled down salaries earned abroad. That provision was excluded when the agreement was approved in December 2024, as contrary to Regulation 883/2004 (Unédic). No such reduction applies.

Amount and duration depend on your age and how long you worked. We deliberately quote no figures here: the simulators of France Travail and the Agentur für Arbeit use the current values.

First: ask your employer for the international employer certificate (form 716.052). Second: use form 716.053 to request the PD U1 from a Swiss unemployment fund; it certifies your insurance periods in Switzerland. According to EURES-T this is the fund in the canton where your employer has its registered office, and you can apply before the contract ends.

Third: register with France Travail as a jobseeker on the first day of unemployment at the latest, and send in the U1 as soon as you have it. Fourth: if you had Swiss health insurance, you need form S1 for the CPAM to get a French social security number; request it from your Swiss health insurer while you are still a cross-border worker.

Important: ending the employment contract by mutual agreement in Switzerland does not give entitlement to French unemployment benefit (prefecture of Haute-Savoie). The entitlement requires an involuntary loss of employment, such as a dismissal or the end of a fixed-term contract.

Register as a jobseeker with your Agentur für Arbeit at least three months before the employment ends, or at the latest three days after you learn of it. Registering late can suspend the entitlement for a week. You must also register as unemployed, at the latest on the first day without work.

You request the PD U1 the same way as cross-border workers living in France: the international employer certificate (716.052) from your employer, then form 716.053 to the unemployment fund in the canton of your employer’s registered office.

The EU is revising the coordination rules of Regulation 883/2004. Unemployed cross-border workers would in future register with the country of their last employment rather than their country of residence. Council and Parliament reached a provisional agreement on 22 April 2026, and the European Parliament approved it on 7 July 2026. According to SECO, as of 7 July 2026 the Council of the EU still had to approve it.

Even once adopted, the reform does not apply to Switzerland automatically. It can only be taken over through the Joint Committee of the free movement agreement, with Switzerland’s express consent after its usual approval procedure. In 2026 the rule therefore still stands: the country of residence is responsible.