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Around 60,000 cross-border commuters live in the Basel area. There is a special contact point for them. A particularly large number of questions currently relate to the regulations on working from home.
It is housed in an old customs house, just under a kilometer from Basel on French soil: the “Infobest Palmrain” advice center. Counselors from France, Germany and Switzerland work here. For around 30 years, they have been answering around 5,000 questions a year about life in Dreiland, and their work sheds light on the jungle of laws, regulations and trinational agreements.
“Most of the questions we are asked come from cross-border commuters. For example: In which country do I have to pay taxes? Or: where am I insured now », describes the Swiss representative of the advice center, Marc Borer. Frequently, however, there are also very personal questions and concerns that are brought to the advisors.
«Dismissals, labor law, disabilities: These are all very emotional topics. It sometimes happens that we have very angry people on the phone. Sometimes I feel like a social worker,” Borer continues.
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Marc Borer (CH), Marcus Schick (DE) and Julien Kurtz (FR) are available in Swiss German, German and French for the people in Dreiland and their questions.
SRF / Roland Schnetz
However, “Infobest Palmrain” has long since stopped advising only cross-border commuters. “There really are all sorts of questions. I’ve also been able to explain to a woman how she can set up her own dominatrix studio in Switzerland,” says Borer.
Difficult situation – the Corona period
Inquiries piled up during the pandemic. The phone rang non-stop. The pandemic: drastic for the three countries. In a region where friends and families could move naturally and without restrictions across borders, this was a deep turning point.
“For months we didn’t know what all these rules from three different countries actually mean for life here in the three countries. Obtaining and verifying these different regulations took countless working days,” says Borer. The aftermath of this time can still be felt.
Laws that were made before the Corona crisis are now causing problems. This made it possible for cross-border commuters to work from home to an extent that the laws of the last 50 years had not provided for. The uncertainty surrounding the topic of working from home is great among the people in Dreiland.
For months we didn’t know what all these rules meant for life in Dreiland.
Sometimes “Infobest Palmrain” even gets questions from Hamburg and Berlin. Because today it can be enough for a worker to fly to Basel from the north of Europe once a month and do the rest of his work at home in the home office.
However, by definition, cross-border workers must cross borders and not work from home abroad. But Borer says: “Ultimately, it’s about people understanding each other. This is crucial in a region with three countries and four languages. At the end of the day, it’s about bringing people together.”