Brussels, 10/06/2014 (Agence Europe) - In Harpsund, Sweden, on Tuesday 10 June, British Prime Minister David Cameron announced that he had reached an agreement with his German, Dutch and Swedish counterparts “to combat abuses of the freedom of movement” in the EU, AFP reports. The Conservative prime minister was speaking on the sidelines of a mini-summit called by Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, with an agenda which included the controversial issue of the individual to take the reins of the Commission from José Manuel Barroso.
This agreement did not go into detail, but includes the refrain often repeated by the Tory Prime Minister, who focused his criticism on Bulgarian and Romanian workers, accused of flocking to the United Kingdom and throwing the social security system out of balance. These concerns were shared in spring 2013 by Germany, the Netherlands and Austria, which wrote a joint letter to the Commission on the subject. Without going into detail on the agreement, Cameron said that the leaders had “agreed that we should work together to fight the excesses of the freedom of movement”. “It is right and proper that we are free to travel throughout Europe in order to work, but not that we should be free to take undue advantage of the social protection systems”, he added.
In any case, this announcement comes across as further warning to Jean-Claude Juncker, EPP candidate to take over from Barroso. The Luxembourg candidate has no intention of tampering with the principle of free movement and has stated several times that the problem should not be blown out of proportion. “Just 2.4% of Europeans live in a country other than their country of origin”, he stressed during the electoral campaign. “The freedom of movement is one of the four fundamental liberties of the Treaty of Rome. We cannot allow capital to circulate and not people”, said Juncker. (SP)