Danes back Cameron on migrant benefits
DENMARK’S new foreign minister has backed David Cameron on the need to “push back” the powers of the European Union so that member states can limit or delay unemployment benefits for EU migrants.
In his first comments to international press on Britain’s EU reform programme since taking office in June, Kristian Jensen said that Denmark also wanted to stop EU citizens who move to a new European country from becoming immediately eligible for unem- ployment benefits. “Where we see eyeto-eye with Cameron and the UK is on the question of whether the European Union should be a social union or whether welfare benefits is a national issue,” he said. “The freedom to move … is the freedom to move and have a job, not the freedom to move and claim.” He made the comments as police arrested 27 suspected illegal immigrants found inside a lorry at an M25 service station close to Chelsea Football Club’s training ground.
Mr Jensen said he believed that Denmark and Britain were not the only countries seeking such reforms. “That is an issue that not only Denmark and the UK, but a lot of European countries are facing right now, and I think there is common ground.”
Mr Jensen said that Denmark was yet to receive any concrete proposals from British negotiators on what agreements the UK was hoping to exact from its EU partners on reform.
“We are in a position right now where we can’t yet see what cards the opposition is holding,” he said. “We are trying to look at where the common ground is where Denmark and the UK can stand together, because we want to be supportive.”
Mr Jensen, who stands on the pro-European wing of Denmark’s centre-Right Liberal Party, refused to be drawn on whether his government would be more closely allied to the UK or Germany.
“We’ll be more on the Danish line than the Merkel or the Cameron line,” he said. “But if there are two lines, I think you will find Denmark going to the core of the European Union.”
He said that his country would follow the UK’s lead and decline to join the common asylum and migration system proposed by the European Commission in May if it becomes eligible to join such a scheme after a referendum on Dec 3.
“It’s not that we don’t want to keep taking refugees, but we want to decide for ourselves who to take and when to help,” he said. Denmark’s government this week brought forward the date for its referendum, reportedly to avoid it becoming confused with the UK’s negotiations, which are expected to start in earnest after David Cameron makes a speech in Brussels in December.
Unlike the UK and Ireland’s flexible opt-outs, Denmark’s opt-out from justice and home affairs legislation presently gives it no right to “opt-in” to European legislation and cooperation in these areas if it wishes.