"Directive 2014/66/EU on Intra-Corporate Transfer regulates the temporary secondment of key personnel and trainees from third countries to the Member States of the EU. It is part of the EU external labour migration policy and aims at facilitating this policy by setting up harmonised conditions for admission, residence and work of these migrants, including the right to move and work in another Member State. This article analyses the role and meaning of the provisions in this Directive relating to the employment and social security rights of intra-corporate transferees. They are the result of cumbersome negotiations and the compromises that were reached are ambiguously and inconsistently formulated. First, this article will highlight the relevance of the worker's employment position for determining the scope of this Directive. Next, it will analyse the role of employment and social security rights in the implementation of the Directive by the Member States. These rights are relevant as criteria for admission, as grounds for rejection of an application, as grounds for withdrawal or non-renewal of an ICT permit and as conditions for short-term and long-term mobility within the EU. Subsequently, this article will scrutinise, in detail, the provisions of Article 18 of the Directive which guarantee equal treatment with the nationals of the host State in respect of employment and social security rights. Special attention will be paid to the interrelationship of this Directive with other EU legal instruments such as the Posting of Workers Directive, the Rome I Regulation and social security Regulation 883/2004. It concludes that the complicated and contradictorily worded provisions on employment and social security rights in this Directive reflect the ambiguity in the perception of the status of this type of migrant worker coming from a third country: are they to be considered as temporary workers or do they really participate in the labour market of the host Member States?"

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