Brussels, 28/08/2014 (Agence Europe) - Germany shares the concerns of the United Kingdom and, in its turn, on Wednesday 28 August, announced legislative measures aiming to restrict the access of European migrants to social benefits.
The plan announced by Home Affairs Minister Thomas de Maizières aims, amongst other things, to ban migrants who lied in order to claim benefits or abused the system from returning to German territory for a limited period. It also plans to reduce child benefit to migrants whose children remain in their country of origin. The government also hopes to look into the possibility of setting the level of this child benefit on the basis of the country in which the child is resident.
The phenomenon is by no means widespread. Just 0.64% of the 14.3 million children conferring entitlement to child benefit are resident abroad, according to figures quoted by the daily newspaper Le Monde. However, this is the case with 28.7% of the 144,000 Polish children who have a parent working in Germany. British Prime Minister David Cameron has also pledged to tackle child benefit European migrants, also targeting mainly Polish citizens. (SP)