Luxembourg, 08/10/2013 (Agence Europe) - The free movement of citizens in Europe is working well and any abuses could easily be dealt with by the member states if they applied existing rules better.
That was the message addressed in Luxembourg on Tuesday 8 October by Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Viviane Reding to those states which, in the spring, complained their welfare systems were being put under pressure by the arrival of Community workers.
In a joint letter, Germany, the United Kingdom, Austria and the Netherlands wondered about how to counter what they described as welfare benefit tourism, without directly naming workers from Eastern Europe, and the effectiveness of Directive 2004/38/EC on citizens' freedom of movement. It was agreed that the Commission would draft an interim report for the start of October on the problems faced by these four, and other, states. All the member states were consulted and 19 submitted data. The outcome is that, in the opinion of the Commission, there are no grounds for calling the 2004 directive into question, as, on average, 68% of mobile Community workers are in employment (compared with 65% of nationals) and most European migrants have moved to another country in order to work and not to take advantage of better welfare than they would find in their own country. If there is a problem then it lies with non-EU nationals.
According to the statistics presented by the Commission on Tuesday, in Germany in 2012, almost 81% of unemployment benefits went to Germans looking for work, 15.45% to non-EU nationals and 3.98% to intra-EU migrants. In the Netherlands, the proportions in 2012 were 82.66% for Dutch nationals, 15.8% to non-EU nationals and 1.54% to intra-EU migrants. Mobility remains very limited in Europe, the Commission says, basing its comment on statistics from Eurostat, the statistical office of the EU: at the end of 2012, only 2.8% of European citizens were living in a member state other than that of their birth and the annual cross-border mobility level remained at 0.29%, Reding said. In the United States, the level is 2.4%. Mobility has helped economic growth with a 1% increase in GDP between 2004 and 2009 for the former EU15, said the commissioner, perhaps dismissing the response deemed unconvincing from the United Kingdom. The UK, which after all called for this debate and has for some months been conducting campaigns to dissuade Romanian, Polish and Bulgarian workers from entering the country, did not provide any information to back up its claim to be a victim of welfare tourism, merely a few quite incoherent and incomplete figures (which the Commission did not even use in its official presentation), according to some sources.
The Commission accepts that there are some residual difficulties with freedom of movement and does not deny that there are abuses, which existing rules could prevent. It undertook on Tuesday to prepare a guide on marriages of convenience for member states and guidelines so that national authorities can ensure better compliance with the principle of usual residence, on which many welfare benefits are based, and use the habitual residence test to the full. The Commission also intends hold a conference of mayors in spring 2014, to discuss their real problems. It will also submit its final report on the matter in December of next year. Reding, however, is already certain that, far from being a real problem, freedom of movement for European citizens is suffering principally from a bad public perception. (SP/transl.fl)