To think freedom of movement is not understood by most!

[Onetwothree4]

I'm an EU citizen, lived most of my life in the UK and I can't stand this political nonsense of lies and misinterpretation anymore! Do you guys know that the freedom of movement exercised by most EU countries is as follows:

1. You can move to another EU country without a visa for 3 months to stay, study or look for work
2. After 3 months you will have to apply for a permission to settle based on your employment, family ties or studies
3. You will also have to prove you are financially able to look after yourself and not become a burden on the country's social welfare system.
4. You have to apply to be included in the social security system to be entitled to healthcare, education, benefits etc..

The UK GOVERNMENT decided to operate this free for all approach of people being able to just jump on the plane and go straight to the doctors. Most EU countries (maybe even all others!) did not! You can not do this in other EU countries.

The culprit is the UK government, not the EU! Why did they do that? I don't know. Probably needed the workforce? This is all smoke and mirrors and a big game played by the privileged boys in politics who want the top job.

Just to spell it out: If you wanted to move to my country, which is a full EU country with euro as currency, you would have to LEAVE after 3 months if you could not prove a valid reason to be there. This is how EU works. It's the UK law makers who took a very liberal approach to these rules and created this mess called Brexit.

Hester54 - dense population is different from farmland, etc. The two are separate. The UK is not the densest in Europe. It is one of the countries with a dense population compared to other European countries. Whether there is space to grow food or not is a different thing. I don't believe, at last check, there is enough space in the UK to grow food for the UK population. But then, we get into the change in industries in the UK, rising costs of farming, who owns the land, etc. which is not the same topic as whether the UK has space for more people.

But the point here is that the blame of the current situation lies, NOT with the EU or the FOM, but the UK government. It's not the fault of an EU citizen to walk through an open door, and it's not the public's fault to feel upset by the changes in their communities. All of this was engineered by the government policy of relaxing rules in 2004. No other EU country chose this approach (correct me if I'm wrong). The public should be campaigning to get rid of their corrupt leaders and not the EU.

Onetwothree4 What do you do when they don’t listen? We end where we are .

NoNewsisGood We can’t let more greenfield sites disappear, we have to import to much food now, hence part of project fear

But the point here is that the blame of the current situation lies, NOT with the EU or the FOM, but the UK government

Yes and no. The FOM rules reflect the fact that many other European countries already have much more effective policing and enforcement. They have the structures in place.

People say our government could have been stricter about things and that is true BUT we'd have had to substantially change the way we manage the relationships between State and people to do it (and spend a shedload of cash and massively expand the public sector). Part of the problem is that we never properly joined the EU project - we should have embraced it properly and fully or not at all - but instead we kept our currency, kept out of Schengen and generally played at being on the sidelines.

Our antiquated and adversarial legal and political systems aren't really compatible with a co-operative EU.

Some of Hester54's points need to be clarified.

its just not about the stupid 3 month rule, lets be honest is hard to enforce – it is enforced throughout most of the EU, Germany has 83 million residents and manage it just fine.

Its more about huge numbers of low and unskilled workers taking jobs from the British low and unskilled workers, keeping wages low – incorrect. Migration has little effect on UK wages and on unemployment. See fullfact.org/immigration/immigration-and-jobs-labour-market-effects-immigration/

FOM has impacted the UK more than any other EU country, ..the more population you have the more people you need, it’s a never ending circle, UK has more immigrants per head than any other EU country Incorrect – the UK is only 14th out of 28 EU countries in terms of immigrants per 1,000 population. ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Migration_and_migrant_population_statistics.

we are already the mostly densely populated country in the EU – Incorrect. The UK has 272 people per square km, far behind Belgium (374) and Netherlands (416).

the ID card system got voted out - Correct. It was voted out largely due to the efforts of David Davis - who once he became Brexit minister promptly wanted to introduce it.

Apart from the silly three month rule how can With FOM the U.K. stop another 1/2/3 million EU citizens coming here ? - As above, the ‘silly 3-month rule’ works well across most of the EU. The attraction of moving somewhere else ends when the jobs are all filled or work dries up. People don’t leave their families and trek 1,000 miles across Europe just to sit on their arses. Thousands of British workers from the North of England moved to Germany when there was plenty of work there and no work in the UK. This migration ended when the German jobs ended and prospects improved in the UK. Something similar is happening with Polish workers, who are now returning to Poland.

The Government did try to deport people they are jumped on by opposition and lefties in the population – The government were deemed to be acting unlawfully by the High Court, not by ‘lefties.’ www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/dec/14/home-office-policy-deport-eu-rough-sleepers-ruled-unlawful

The EU could have insisted that all member states apply the rules correctly, could have put numbers on immigration - It is the UK that does not apply the rules. Putting a cap on the numbers would mean restricting FOM, so would breach one of the EU’s Four Freedoms.

They are already inflicting rules on us, hence FOM, apart from the 3 month rule how else can the U.K. control FOM - The EU is not some foreign superpower ‘inflicting’ rules on anyone. FOM is one of the Four Freedoms, fundamental to the whole ethos of the EU. The UK is a member of the EU – actually one of the more active members in terms of defining EU legislation – but it is the UK government that decides how it registers and manages immigration. Remember, 2 out of every 3 immigrants to the UK currently come from outside of the EU.

That’s as far as I got (Page 5 of the thread). From there on it just seems Hester is repeating herself.

Havanananana - You are right but also, as with so much in this EU argument, not taking certain factors into account. – it - (3m rule) is enforced throughout most of the EU, Germany has 83 million residents and manage it just fine.

But the whole structure of German administration is different from that in the UK. Their organisation into departments, their healthcare syatem, their rules on ID are already set up to deal with this. As familycourtq says - it would have been a huge undertaking for the UK to sort this out.

Great post Havana and one that should be "stickied" at the top of all Brexit threads imho, especially the penultimate paragraph!

I may be misreading the article you linked to but the figures show the UK second only to Germany in terms of immigration numbers in 2017?

However don't want to argue. The key point is that the situation on which a life-changing vote was based is far from clear-cut.

Havanananana It is a stupid rule if it’s not enforced properly, who is going to pay for the extra work needed? Taxpayers?
Sorry it wouldn’t let me open the link, but being the 3rd most densely populated EU
country( it was 1st on a chart I saw) 3rd out of 28, it puts extra strain on an already densely populated country
So ID cards were voted out
So apart from the silly 3 month rule, you still can’t tell me me how we can stop any EU citizen coming here.
The EU could have insisted that all numbers follow the same rules on FOM, yes one of there 4 pillars, which we cannot avoid
They are inflicting rules on use FOM is one, so the U.K. can tomorrow say no more EU citizens can come and live and work in the U.K. ?
Yes the U.K. is a member for now and has to obey the rules, but as we have seen with vote the majority who voted, voted to leave,

who is going to pay for the extra work needed? Taxpayers?

You do realise that the additional people who would have been employed to run the system if the government had wished to implement controls would have been taxpayers too? Not to mention that more people with money to spend because they have a decent job means more cash going back into the economy = good for the country.

CleopatraTomato

The UK has several registration systems. In fact, it has more systems than most other countries. In the UK I currently have

• a National Insurance number

• a National Health Service number
• a DVLA driving license number
• a HMRC Unique Tax Identifier (UTI) number
• a Government Gateway number
• a Passport number

Each of these databases is holds 40m -60m records. Few of them actually interact with, or correspond to each other.

By contract, I have lived and worked in several other EU countries. For example, in Denmark citizens have a CPR number. One number that works for just about everything.

CleopatraTomato It’s amazing how different sites tell you different information,
I can only go by what I see and the numbers, where I live and how the local factory only now employ EU citizens on lower than min wage, they were paying the U.K. staff more than 10 years ago, but some articles suggest that they have effect on low skilled wages

OnlyTheTitOfTheIceberg And properly given To EU citizens ahead of U.K. people

@Hester54 you asked what can be now? It is actually to open your mind to the possibility that the information you based your leave vote on was not correct. That your media and your politicians manipulated your thoughts on EU and the FOM to cover up their past decisions that impacted your community.
Repeatedly calling the 3m rule silly means you are still not accepting the fact that other big EU countries that are attractive to immigrants operate this rule effectively.
Even if you wanted to, you would never be able to stop another EU migrant coming to this country in the same way that no one can stop you moving abroad if you wanted to. Why would you even want that? This is not North Korea

Yes well aware thanks, I have family living in Germany and Spain. Still voted Leave.
It’s the whole principle if the EU I disagree with. I look forward to the whole sorry thing imploding eventually-I don’t want to be part of enabling other failing economies.

Havanananana _ indeed - maybe that is part of the problem.

@Hester54 You say your local factory pays EU migrants less than the minimum wage? If that's true, who do you think reaps the benefits from that? It's not the worker, it's the employer. And who do you think creates the rules that let your local factory get away with this? It's your very own government. Not the EU.

Hester54

The EU could have insisted that all numbers follow the same rules on FOM, yes one of there 4 pillars, which we cannot avoid - You still appear to be blaming the EU for the UK's failure to find a way of implementing a rule that most other countries have no problem following.

They are inflicting rules on use FOM is one, so the U.K. can tomorrow say no more EU citizens can come and live and work in the U.K. ?
'Inflicting?' The UK is a member of the EU and agrees to abide by the rules that all the members have agreed to - including the UK.

NOT with the EU or the FOM, but the UK government. It's not the fault of an EU citizen to walk through an open door, and it's not the public's fault to feel upset by the changes in their communities. All of this was engineered by the government policy of relaxing rules in
The rules were the same for UK and Irish citizens therefore they stayed the same for EE citizens.
In Ireland and the UK there are people who never had a job or paid stamps, who have lived their entire life on from a government handout. I don't think it is right, but it was the rules before free roam.
AFAIK Spain France Germany Poland never allowed this from their people, you get a year of benefits max and back to work, in Poland if you haven't paid in the pension you won't get one.
The welfare system in Ireland and the UK needs a complete overhaul, those who can work should.
At least the UK is making a change for the future with the two child policy.
If there was one thing I could change it would be the welfare system, unfortunately there are takers from all country's.

@Hester you need to report your company.

Onetwothree4 The 3 month rule is silly if it’s not enforced and it’s easy to get around, we have the 2nd highest immigration after Germany (2017) but we are more densely populated than them, much harder to enforce,
I can see with my own eyes the impact of FOM has had in my area (Lincolnshire) I don’t need telling,

Hester54

I can only go by what I see and the numbers, where I live and how the local factory only now employ EU citizens on lower than min wage

Lower than minimum wage is illegal. You should report your local factory. Would any British person want to work for less than minimum wage? They shouldn't. I wouldn't.
Don't blame the immigrants. Blame the factory bosses.

@EmeraldShamrock the UK benefits system is not the best in EU. There are far better ones out there for example the Scandinavian and Dutch ones. That's why they've chosen to protect it by imposing restrictions on who gets to settle after 3 months...

Havanananana Yes inflicting, that’s why one of numerous reasons the vote was as it was,
Still the U.K. couldn’t stop FOM without breaking EU law