Brussels, 26/09/2014 (Agence Europe) - On Friday 26 September, the European Commission published a practical guide to help the member states of the EU to take measures to fight marriages of convenience between citizens of the EU and third-country nationals.
This was the concretisation of an announcement made by the Commission in mid-2013, in response to requests from several member states, including the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany, to tackle abuses of the freedom of movement and, in particular, social benefit fraud. The former Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, Viviane Reding, proposed an action plan in November of last year, also including local authority approaches. This handbook on marriages of convenience was prepared “in close cooperation with the member states following requests by a number of EU countries for support in dealing with the phenomenon,” the Commissioner explained in a statement.
The handbook lists operational recommendations on how to approach investigations into alleged marriages of convenience; an overview of effective investigative techniques developed by the national authorities and information on the role that Europol, Eurojust and the European Commission can play; advice on the application of a “double-lock mechanism” to minimise the danger of false identification of a genuine couple as abusive; an overview of the rules that national authorities must take into account when acting to prevent or tackle abuse and details on what these rules mean in practice, the Commission explains.
Last October, Commissioner Reding provided a few specific figures on the phenomenon and suspected abuses of the social security systems, on the basis of elements submitted by several member states. (SP)