Brussels, 29/07/2014 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 29 July, UK Prime Minister David Cameron set out plans for reducing social benefits to European immigrants. As of November, nationals from other European Union countries who come to the United Kingdom to seek work will be able to receive unemployment benefit or family credit for only three months from the date of their arrival in the United Kingdom, as opposed to the current six months. In a piece in the Daily Telegraph, Cameron also called for an end to the advertising of more than 500,000 job offers in the United Kingdom on EU job portals.
This announcement is part of a questioning amongst the British political leaders for some time of the principle of the free movement of Europeans and seeks to reduce the number of migrants coming to the United Kingdom. This measure has been announced one year before the next general election. Cameron's intentions, however, have left the European Commission somewhat sceptical. Jonathan Todd, spokesman for the Commission and the Commissioner for Social Affairs, Laszo Andor, repeated on Tuesday afternoon that European law did not compel host member states to pay social benefits to newly arrived migrants. Todd explained that, when migrants arrived they had the right to maintain the benefits paid to them in their own member states over a three-month period and that, in this respect, it was rather difficult to understand why the announcement had been made. He added that the European directive of 2004 on free movement contained many safeguards for tackling abuses of the benefits system. (SP)