Such instruments could include store cards, petrol cards, membership cards, public transport cards, meal vouchers or vouchers for services (such as vouchers for childcare, or vouchers for social or services schemes which subsidise the employment of staff to carry out household tasks such as cleaning, ironing or gardening), which are sometimes subject to a specific tax or labour legal framework designed to promote the use of such instruments to meet the objectives laid down in social legislation.

setting different levels of benefit, except in so far as may be necessary to take account of actuarial calculation factors which differ according to sex in the case of defined-contribution schemes; in the case of funded defined-benefit schemes, certain elements may be unequal where the inequality of the amounts results from the effects of the use of actuarial factors differing according to sex at the time when the scheme's funding is implemented.

The Court of Justice has confirmed that whilst the contributions of male and female workers to a defined-benefit pension scheme are covered by Article 141 of the Treaty, any inequality in employers' contributions paid under funded defined-benefit schemes which is due to the use of actuarial factors differing according to sex is not to be assessed in the light of that same provision.

Supplementary benefit schemes for self-employed persons in craft-trade, industrial or commercial occupations or the liberal professions, supplementary old-age insurance schemes for self-employed persons in the liberal professions, supplementary insurance schemes for self-employed persons in the liberal professions covering invalidity or death, and supplementary old-age benefit schemes for contracted medical practitioners and auxiliaries, as referred to respectively in Articles L.615-20, L.644-1, L.644-2, L.645-1 and L.723-14 of the Social Security Code.

The Council shall, acting unanimously on a proposal from the Commission, lay down the scheme of social security benefits for officials and other servants of the Communities.

More rigorous monitoring of these services and their staffing resources should be established. c) The operation of social security should be examined, in particular to find ways to achieve a more efficient combination of income support schemes and active policies providing more scope for the unemployed to find work or become self-employed, through measures such as: . restructuring of national income support schemes enabling the transformation of unemployment allowances into wage subsidies and/or topping-up income from work with income from social security, by developing integrated taxation and income support schemes ensuring greater effi ...[+++]ciency of measures in ways which avoid possible adverse or distortive effects.