UK PM curbs EU migrant benefits

Former Labor govt had made ‘monumental mistake’

LONDON, Nov 27, (Agencies): British Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday announced plans to restrict the right of EU migrants to claim unemployment benefits, prompting a rebuke from the bloc’s employment commissioner.

Cameron was responding to growing calls from his Conservative party and sections of the media for action to manage the expected influx of Bulgarian and Romanians when restrictions on their entry to Britain are lifted on Jan 1.

“I know many people are deeply concerned about the impact that could have on our country. I share those concerns,” he wrote in an article in the Financial Times.

But European employment commissioner Laszlo Andor accused Cameron of an “unfortunate overreaction”, telling BBC radio that Britain risked becoming seen as the “nasty country” of the EU.

Cameron said the former Labour government had made a “monumental mistake” in allowing full access to the British labour market for the 10 new member states who joined the EU in 2004.

He suggested that countries joining the bloc in the future be required to reach a certain level of GDP per head before their citizens are allowed to work anywhere in the EU, to stop “vast migrations” caused by income disparity. “It is time for a settlement which recognises that free movement is a central principle of the EU, but it cannot be a completely unqualified one,” he wrote.

Change

He said Britain would negotiate such a change as part of its efforts to reform the bloc before holding a referendum on Britain’s membership by 2017.

To address the immediate concerns, Cameron said no EU migrants will receive out-of-work benefits for the first three months after they arrive in Britain — up from one month currently — and then only for six months.

If migrants are found to be begging or homeless they will be removed and barred from re-entering Britain for a year.

Cameron also proposed increasing by four times the fine levied on businesses who employed migrants for less than the national minimum wage, to up to £20,000 ($32,000, 24,000 euros) per employee.

He suggested the benefits measures should not encounter opposition from Brussels, saying: “All this is what we can legally do within the limits of the treaties.”

But Andor said the British public had not been given “the full truth” about EU migration and warned Cameron: “This is an unfortunate over-reaction.”

The European commissioner said there needed to be “a more accurate presentation of the reality, not under pressure, not under such hysteria which sometimes happens in the UK”.

“The unilateral action, unilateral rhetoric, especially if it is happening at this time, is not really helpful because it risks presenting the UK as the kind of nasty country in the European Union,” he said.

“We don’t want that. We have to look into the situation collectively and if there are real problems react proportionately.”

Dismissed

Cameron’s measures were also dismissed by the UK Independence Party (UKIP), whose demands for less immigration and the return of powers from Brussels to London has made it the fourth largest party in Britain.

“Cameron’s proposals will do nothing to prevent an influx of new migrants from Bulgaria and Romania,” said UKIP leader Nigel Farage.

Farage added that Cameron was “trying to shoot UKIP’s fox with a catapult made from soggy spaghetti.”

Anti-immigration research group MigrationWatch claims some 50,000 Bulgarians and Romanians are set to arrive in Britain in each of the next five years, although the Bulgarian ambassador put the number at around 8,000.

His plan, an attempt to address public fears about an influx of Romanians and Bulgarians when EU restrictions on those two countries expire next year, drew a rebuke from the European Commission which said his intervention was “an unfortunate over-reaction”.

But Cameron, whose Conservative party risks seeing its vote split at European elections next year and at a national election in 2015 by the antiimmigration UK Independence Party, is under pressure to act at a time when he is trailing in the polls.

He has said he will try to renegotiate Britain’s membership of the EU to give it more of a say over its own affairs and has promised to hold an in/out referendum if re-elected in 2015 amid public scepticism about the benefits of belonging to the bloc.