When it comes to pensions, the Regulation introduced the concept of the portability of rights. This means that if a person has worked for more than one year in two or more of any EU/EEA state or in Switzerland, then the Regulation requires each of these states to pay a rate of benefit proportional to the length of insurance periods in such states.
For example, if from a total of 40 years, a person spent 20 years working in Malta, 15 years in Italy and 5 years in the United Kingdom, then this person should get a pension of not less than 20/40 years of the theoretical amount from Malta, 15/40 from Italy and 5/20 from the UK. All these states will work out the full theoretical rate of pension as if the person worked the whole 40 years there.
