Benefits legal warning to UK over cash for EU nationals

[niceguy2]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15120522

Is it some sort of conspiracy from the EU to make the UK pay for everything. Not content with trying to tax our banks to pay for their currency it seems now they want us to pay benefits to all & sundry.

Remind me again why we bother?

[kelly2000]

Lots of other EU countries to not give benefits to new arrivals. The difference is that they tell the EU commission to sod off whereas the UK just panics and does what they tell them.
For instance Denmark has a rule that if someone is not Danish, and goes to prison for two years they are automatically sent back to their own country unless they face torture or execution there etc. This does not matter if they have lived all their life there, only speak danish, have all their family in Denmark etc. Britain on the other hand does not - the killer of Philip Lawrence, the headmaster murdered in the early 1990's, was allowed to stay in the UK and not returned to Italy as Britain said it was against the European human rights act (which I admit is seperate from the EU, but the same sort of thing) and his right to a family life.

[reckoner]

Of course other EU countries never pay for anything

[alemci]

we have mug tattoed on our borders. It is such a joke when we are being told to make cuts and services are being cut to people who live here. I wish we would stick a finger up at this as well. we are so stupid IMO

[niceguy2]

Exactly Kelly. We seem to be practically the only country to religiously follow every rule no matter how bonkers whereas other countries seem to pick & choose which they adopt.

I hope the Tories stand up to these bunch of clowns. I remember Tony Blair giving up our hard earned EU rebate and in return got the "promise" of talks over CAP reform. Naturally once we'd done that, the French "talked" and said "Non" to CAP reform. Great talk....shame about our rebate.

Now they want us to pay 80% of the banking tax because they were stupid enough to start a currency we declined to join. Oh and now they want us to give benefits to all & sundry but I bet you any money if we arrived in their country there'd be some rule which stops us from claiming from their social security system.

Up until recently I considered myself to be fairly pro-Europe but right now I am not really seeing the benefits.

[dreamingofsun]

agree. lets hope the gov tells them to bog off. We can't even afford to educate our children past 18 now, so why should we pay benefits to someone who's not previously even lived here.

[OpinionatedMum]

Why do we bother? What are the benefits?

[kelly2000]

I really do not see why non-eurozone countries have to help euro-zone countries. having said that if I was german I would be livid having to help bail out Greece where people still want to retire at 52, and are protesting against those saying they will only get bail outs if they make cuts. Someone wrote in the guardian a few weeks ago that this was just imperialism!

[alexpolismum]

Other EU countries do pay benefits to EU nationals. I don't know why you think they don't.

And kelly2000 - if you really think that's what the Greek crisis is about I suggest you do a bit more research. I suspect you would protest too if you received a letter on 20 Sept telling you that you had until the end of the month to find 1100 euros of extra tax, on top what you had already paid/ were already paying.

[WidowWadman]

Niceguy - you're entitled to the same benefits should you wish to go and live in another EU country, too.

[kelly2000]

alex,
Most other EU countries have a time limit like Britain does, i.e if you had lived there for a year you qualified if less than that time then no benefits. Some refuse to let you stay if you cannot support yourself. In Denmark non-danish EU citizens have to get a CPR number (like the UK NI number) after being in the country for six months maximum. In order to get one they had to get a residency certificate and in order to get that they have a job, or several thousand in the bank. If not then no residency certificate, and they have to leave the country even if they are from the EU.
The issue is not giving immigrants benefits as we already do, the issue is how long they have to be in the country before they qualify.

And if I was Greek I would not be protesting the meeting where they are trying to sort out the bail out agreement. If they do not make a bailout agreement they do not get the bail out. If they do not get the bailout they go bankrupt. Protest at their own government all they want, but they have no right to be protesting at those giving them the bail out, especially not to such an extent the meeting was cancelled.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15120696

in the above link it talks about the inspectors deciding ont he bailout having their meeting moved.
besides I would still be pissed off if I was German.

[kelly2000]

widow,
she would not be entitled straight away, the time she would have to live there would depend on the country.

[WidowWadman]

kelly being an EU immigrant to the UK myself I know that any social benefits, should I have wished to claim them in the UK in the first 3 months after my arrival would have been paid for by my home country, just have a google for E303

In the same way you are entitled to go jobhunting in another EU country and take your contribution based JSA with you for up to 3 months.

[kelly2000]

Ok sorry,
I thought you meant she would be entitled to the same benefits as the nationals of the EU country she went to, straight away.

[WidowWadman]

Well, you're not entitled to the same benefits as a UK national straight away either, when you're moving here from another EU country, even if it's spun that way over and over and over again.

[WidowWadman]

You do not need to work while you are living in the UK. But if you do not work, you must be able to support yourself and your family in the UK without becoming an unreasonable burden on public funds.

[alexpolismum]

kelly - they are protesting the terms of the bailout. For most ordinary people in Greece, what they can see is that they have to pay ever higher tax bills on ever lower incomes, plus various so-called one-off extra tax payments (except they are not one-off, there's a new one every month, it's just they call them all different names). And all this might be accepted somehow if they could see a light at the end of the tunnel, but the measures are pushing the Greek economy further and further into the abyss. I might not agree with the protests, but I can certainly understand what some of them might be thinking.

[WidowWadman]

Also, looking at the example in this article I think the EU is quite right to contest how benefits are administered.

"The Commission cites the example of a worker who moved to the UK from Italy in 2009 after living in Italy for 20 years. She worked in the UK for an Italian company for two years until April 2009, paying taxes and national insurance contributions until she was made redundant.

And yet, said the Commission, her claim for income-based jobseekers' allowance was refused on the grounds that she did not have a right to reside in the UK. "

This woman has been living here and paying in for 2 years, and is not entitled to help? When do you think can someone be considered settled in the UK? Reading cases like this makes me personally very worried, after having lived here for over 6 years.

[bunjies]

I don't understand why other EU countries aren't being called to task about this.

When we moved to France I had an enormous battle with the French authorities to get child benefit for our 3 children as they said we weren't entitled to it even though they were in full time education. We could also prove that we could support ourselves as we had capital from the sale of our house in the UK. It took months of laborious letter writing arguing that the benefit was for the children and not us to get them to give us what they were entitled to under EU legislation. So I don't understand why the EU aren't having a go at other countries for being obstructive as well. Why are they singling out the UK?

[WidowWadman]

bunjies are you sure the UK are being singled out or is it just reporting bias? I'm sure there are similar complaints in every single EU country about how they're the only ones paying and the rest is taking the piss