11 Nov 2014

Cameron welcomes ECJ ruling against benefits tourist

The PM, campaigning in Rochester, welcomed the European Court of Justice judgement on a Romanian woman who wanted to stay in Germany claiming benefits and not looking for work.  You can see the full judgement here.

The ECJ ruled that EU citizens who enter a country “solely” to claim benefits can be excluded from welfare payments. On one level this is the European Court allowing EU countries limited autonomy over benefits when “benefits tourism” is happening, at a time when the argument (in the UK and some other countries) has raced past this point in the outside lane.

The Tories (and Labour, I hear) are looking at stopping access to non-contributory benefits (which is most benefits) even for EU citizens who are working their chaussettes off.

Tory ministers insist the judgement is actually more helpful to the new  phase two of the EU benefits project than it looks at first glance because it lends support to the idea that EU citizens are not automatically entitled to  non-contributory benefits. They’re claiming it encourages those around the PM working on his speech (to be delivered in the next few weeks), intended to show he can act on EU migration.

Having attacked benefit tourism and then moved on to restricting some out of work benefits for EU citizens in the UK, senior Tories are looking at restricting other in-work benefits. A recent Open Europe report matches some of their recent thinking and suggests the government should look at restricting rights to social housing and NHS access as well as working tax credits.

The co-author, Professor Damian Chalmers, believes the ECJ judgement means “potentially all” UK benefits could now be stripped from EU migrant workers.

One Whitehall source said what David Cameron would really have liked was to see Chancellor Merkel’s government rebuffed. That might put her closer to his wavelength, searching for more drastic changes to the rules, not, as she may well be, comforted that the existing rules permit her to take on benefits tourism without a big-re-think.

The judgement appears to support those countries that return EU migrants who are out of work to their native countries and may mean other countries copying programmes like the Belgian mass letter drops.

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