EU Court Rules Against Benefit Tourists
EU Members Can Refuse to Pay Benefits to Economically Inactive Citizens of Other States
BERLIN—Migrants who move within the European Union seeking welfare benefits instead of work can be denied such payments, the EU’s top court said Tuesday, handing the bloc’s most prosperous countries a victory amid mounting anti-immigrant sentiment.
Governments in the 28-nation bloc can refuse to pay certain social benefits to “economically inactive” citizens of other member states who use their right to free movement to claim welfare without attempting to find a job, the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice said in a highly anticipated ruling.
The decision drew cheers from ruling parties in Germany and the U.K., whose governments have pledged to clamp down on what they see as welfare abuse by so-called benefit tourists from poor EU countries.
Analysts said the ruling could ease the pressure on governments from anti-EU, anti-immigration parties, like the Alternative for Germany, the U.K. Independence Party, and the Front National in France. They blame EU citizens’ freedom to move and settle anywhere in the bloc—a core principle of the EU—for alleged uncontrolled immigration from mainly Eastern European member states.
While such rhetoric has helped the upstart parties score electoral successes in their respective countries this year, the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, has long rejected the accusation, saying national governments have sufficient latitude to clamp down on benefit abuse.
Karl Schiewerling, labor market spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel ’s center-right parliamentary group, said “the ruling creates legal clarity and protects our welfare system.” Anthea McIntyre, a British Conservative in the European parliament, said the court “has ruled in favor of common sense.”
The judgment is “a pretty good thing for the U.K. in general and northern European countries who have been pressing for more action on the benefits question,” said John Springford, an economist at the Centre for European Reform in London. While the case has highlighted the tension between the fundamental right to life and dignity and EU regulations governing welfare access, “the court found in favor of the regulation,” Mr. Springford said.
The ruling concerned the case of a Romanian mother in Germany who was denied the lowest tier of job seekers’ benefits. The court said that since the woman, Elisabeta Dano, had no professional training or work experience and didn’t enter Germany to seek work, Germany’s refusal to grant her an allowance didn’t infringe the EU’s antidiscrimination law.
Freedom of movement to live and work anywhere in the bloc is enshrined in the EU’s treaties and national governments are prohibited from discriminating between their own citizens and those of other EU countries. But access to certain welfare benefits can be limited to people who can’t provide for themselves, the judges said.
Tuesday’s ruling didn’t question freedom of movement, but it said migrants within the EU have to support themselves if they are “economically inactive.”
Still, critics in the German opposition said the ruling showed a selective interpretation of the principle. Freedom of movement also meant “the right to a sociocultural subsistence,” Katja Kipping, chairwoman of Germany’s far-left Die Linke party, said.
Fears of the impact of immigration on the welfare system, labor market, and social services like housing and health care, have helped prompt a surge in support for anti-EU parties like Alternative for Germany, UKIP and France’s National Front.
British Prime Minister David Cameron has vowed to make curbing immigration from within the EU one of his top priorities—despite warnings from other European leaders about violating core EU principles. While Ms. Merkel has pledged to clamp down on benefits abuse, she sees freedom of movement within the EU as sacrosanct, her spokesman said last week.
The benefit denied Ms. Dano is a monthly payout for people below a certain income who aren’t eligible for regular unemployment insurance. It currently amounts to €391 for a single person. Ms. Dano’s entitlement to child benefit of €184 a month and a maintenance payment of €133 a month wasn’t questioned in the case.
Data suggests “benefit tourism” is a relatively small-scale phenomenon. A 2013 study by the European Commission found citizens from other member states were no more likely to rely on welfare benefits than the host country’s nationals.
Of the more than 6.1 million people receiving the most basic form of unemployment benefit in Germany, under 2% are from the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Just 1% are from Bulgaria and Romania, which entered the EU’s free movement area this year.
In the U.K., citizens from new EU member states made up 1% of working age benefit claimants in February 2013, according to government data.