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.

So does that mean that the EU always allowed countries to treat EU immigrants differently compared to its own citizens?

No, EU rules require EU immigrants be treated the same as locals. So for example where I live university is free for native children so EU citizens should have it free too. Except national law requires a person to have been resident for 2 years to qualify, native or not. So EU citizens can't just rock up and claim on day 1. The rule is the same for both groups.

If any party wants to win the next election with a majority, why don’t they set the conditions that immigrants will be treated, no free NHS untill years contributed to the tax system, otherwise charged, same for other services etc, but they would be against EU rules and would be called racist by the other parties

Have you read the thread? FOM does not mean no control. The government can monitor it. Even without the monitoring that other countries do they have a pretty good idea. The pressure on local services is not down to FOM but government underfunding. By the government 's own admission the NHS will be even worse off without FOM and the EU staff it facilitates.

@LondonGal76

AFAIK Doctors here (France) don't have any say over who is eligible for treatment and what the rules are. Their job is to provide treatment. So the rules are a political decision, and their implementation is overseen by public officials and - at the sharp end - by the secretaries in the various hospitals, clinics, laboratories, etc. The first thing you are asked for is your national health card - which contains all the info about your rights depending on your status. If you are on too low an income to qualify, there are specific cards for that, ditto for refugees. But everyone - whatever their status - needs some form of proof that they have the right to access treatment. It's not just granted. By the time they see a Dr all that has already been dealt with, so Drs have very little to do with the decision of whether they receive treatment or not.

However... I can't read the whole article (paywall) but they don't seem to be differentiating between different groups of immigrants. The rules are very different. For EU nationals, they can either come and live / work in the UK - and get access to healthcare as any other UK person would. Or they come as tourists - and there are reciprocal agreements which allow the NHS to claim back the cost of treatment from the home country via EHIC.

But nationals from other countries outwith the EU - Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Libya - don't have these options. The costs of their care are not reimbursed by their own country, and they often do not arrive through regular immigration channels.

That article refers to tourists / foreign patients / overseas visitors / migrants as if they were one and the same.

@Hester54 there IS control in the FOM. Tony Blair Relaxed all control in 2004!! Tony Blair relaxed it. By his own admission. Germany didn't for example. Most countries DO control. UK chose not to.

Leapyearlover Yes I have, 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, very hard to kept a track of and who pays for the running of the departments and any deportations that will obviously go through a court system,
Can you tell me the exact number of EU citizens that will arrive next year, the government haven’t got a clue, how do they plan where to invest, my area Lincoln, needs more funding than probably a little are in mid Wales

Leapyearlover So we have ended up where we are now, it’s all right for the wealthy as mass immigration doesn’t effect them, if anything supplies them with cheap labour,

I agree with all you say OP. I'm partially from an EU country.

All that said I once lived in another EU country without registering anywhere for anything. perhaps I was fit and young and didn't think about registering with a GP. But no-ones going to chuck you out after 3 months even if at that point you're living on the streets of whatever member state.

Onetwothree4 Apart from the silly three month rule how can With FOM the U.K. stop another 1/2/3 million EU citizens coming here ?

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.
I am living in another EU country and it is the same here. You have to prove after 3 months that you have health insurance and the financial means to stay here - whether that be through a job, self-employment, pension, significant capital.
They can and do throw people out. I have been helping someone recently (they don't know the language despite being here 12 years). They have received notice that they are going to be deported - they are British living in a EU country. They applied for a benefit which they are not allowed to apply for because it is breaching the terms of the agreement when their document was issued after 3 months. You must be able to support yourself without resorting to help from the state.
This person had screwed up because they didn't go after 3 months to get this document and this meant they only got it 3 years ago. Once you have been resident 5 years you get a confirmation of permanent residency and are entitled to apply for the benefit.
I have spoken to some people in the immigration office about this person's case and they told me that the country I am living in deports around 3000 EU citizens a year for not being able to support themselves.

Some people are saying that no one is going to chuck you out even after 3 months you are living on the streets. They can and they do. I am living in a city where some people are sitting begging on streets. The police are going round and rounding them up. The immigration office is checking what documentation they have and they are deporting people who are unable to support themselves because that is in breach of the FOM rules. You must be able to support yourseld.

The UK government chose not to implement these controls and chose not to deport people who had rocked up and started claiming benefits. They could have done this completely differently.

But no-ones going to chuck you out after 3 months even if at that point you're living on the streets of whatever member state.

Where I am living they do send them back.

@VladmirsPoutine I'm by no means an expert in EU immigration laws in all 27 member states. What I do know is that each country is allowed to set certain levels of control to protect their public services from influx of people. Other countries did. UK chose not to. That's my point really. I can't stand the politicians circling around facts to suit their agenda. It's not democracy if facts are being covered up or hidden away.

The Government did try to deport people they are jumped on by opposition and lefties in the population

Thanks OP. I did know that each country had the right to set its own settlement criteria and that the UK had chosen not to apply any such criteria, but not the specific details. I have sympathy with anyone who knowingly used Brexit as a protest vote up to a point, as certain areas in particular have been essentially abandoned and not listened to by successive governments, but I do find it incredibly frustrating when people blame the EU for the failings of our own homegrown politicians.

I was aware of the 3-month rule that the UK doesn't implement, yes. Which do I click? YABU or YNABU? Thanks!

ps. it's set out in the European Citizen's Directive, eg. p5 of this pdf:

eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ%3AL%3A2004%3A158%3A0077%3A0123%3Aen%3APDF

The Government did try to deport people they are jumped on by opposition and lefties in the population

They deported people they had previously promised were entitled to stay after decades of working and paying taxes here doing the jobs we Brits were too up ourselves to 'lower ourselves' to do, assuming you're referring to the Windrush scandal. Damn right I protested at that lack of gratitude, lies, reneging on promises and targeting of those we had relied on following WWII and beyond.

The EU could have insisted that all member states apply the rules correctly, could have put numbers on immigration, could have offered DC more when he went cap in hand, could have offered the existing government permission to pause FOM till services had caught up, takes along time to build hospitals, schools, houses, etc

I totally agree with you, but I think that people have not had the opportunity to vote for the government actually taking the measures that other countries take - they have copped out. The tories don't actually care about public services, extra administration or the effect of immigration on housing or the low paid etc, the Lib Dems have always opposed ID cards etc etc. I voted remain but I can understand why people were drawn to vote brexit through frustration. Housing is probably the big one. That, austerity and the way our benefit system is set up (i.e. it can pay more to work part time and get tax credits etc, which are a form of handout - EU citizens are entitled to assistance in the form of tax credits). Plus, population changes - more EU citizens have a second language in English than any other and the UK economy is very open in terms of acceptance of qualifications for work etc., so this is one reason why more EU citizens come to the Uk to work than vice versa and indeed more Eastern European workers find their way to the UK than to France. Politicians have decided not to plan for increased population and to make spurious assumptions that migrants will return to their home country to get their children into primary school etc, then to tell people there is a problem but that the EU is to blame (tories) or that people are racists (labour) for questioning whether there are sensible measures (such as those you have suggested) that the government could adopt. It is a huge shit show.

@Hester54 well when an EU citizen would arrive, they would have to go and register their arrival date and address. No healthcare, schooling or benefits within that 3 month period. If by the end of their 3 months they wanted to stay, they would need to provide a job contract or other proof of income or no access to services. It would abolish a lot of the cash is hand labour market and deter people from just staying without contributing. This is how it works outside UK. Its not racist. Its common sense. Mass immigration is not desirable in any country.

OnlyTheTitOfTheIceberg I on about EU citizens, convicted rapists/ etc that have used the courts as a way of not being deported

I wholly agree that the UK has dressed up this disaster i.e. failed integration and squeezed public services as the fault of the EU. Indeed many other countries just think the UK policy is batshit and I say that as someone who's lived in NL, DE, BE and Luxembourg. It's going to be very hard to get the message out tbh. To the average man/woman on the street this is all the fault of the EU. Rather remarkable when you think about how ingrained this propaganda is.

I wish there had been some sort of information sheet that both sides had had to sign up to, summarising both arguments, with facts that were independently verified, and not all that '350m a week more to the NHS' and 'we are full up' bollocks

I totally agree. I fear more elections and votes because there are so many lies, particularly with the unscrupulous Murdoch press and the weak, false balance BBC.

@Hester54 But that is all entirely under the remit of the UK Gov. Not an EU competency.

Also the NHS is culturally opposed to refusing medical treatment to people without entitlement - see the last BMA vote. And the NHS doesn't police entitlement. My parents live in France and it took 2 years plus an interview with all documentation showing their assets to get a card entitling them to reimbursement under the french system. You can imagine the opposition in the NHS and hard left to this as an idea in the UK