Welfare for Immigrants: EU Wants Fortress Germany to Open Up

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/brussels-may-force-germany-to-loosen-access-to-social-benefits-a-943224.html



Brussels is demanding that even foreigners who have never worked in Germany should have access to the country's unemployment benefits if they hail from an EU member state. The EU is firing Germany's already overheated immigration debate.

Welfare for Immigrants: EU Wants Fortress Germany to Open Up
By SPIEGEL Staff
January 14, 2014 – 04:36 PM

Lazlo Andor knows from personal experience just how advantageous it can be to go abroad. The Hungarian politician studied economics at universities in Washington and Manchester and then worked as a professor in New Jersey for almost four years. Today he's the commissioner responsible for social affairs on the European Commission in Brussels. The social democrat is fond of saying that the right to live and work anywhere one wants in Europe is "one of the cornerstones of EU integration."

Last Friday, he sent a strong message to the German public. In a 40-page position paper for the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, the EU's highest court, Andor's staff argues that access to Germany's social system be simplified for other EU citizens.

The arguments Andor's experts put forth in the paper -- under headings like the "right of free mobility" and "access to social benefits, regardless if a person has paid into the system" -- could add further fuel to an already overheated immigration debate here in Germany. Since the Christian Social Union (CSU) party -- the Bavarian sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union -- began a crusade against what it calls "poverty immigrants" and "benefit tourists" last year, using the kind of populist language more typically heard at a pub, German politicians have been discussing the creation of new instruments in an effort to keep undesired foreigners out.

Among the ideas being touted are an increase in deportations of foreigners or taking the fingerprints of Bulgarian or Romanian nationals who have entered the country. Now the European Commission is calling for Germany to change its social security laws in the opposite direction in order to ensure easier access to the country's Hartz IV benefits for the long-term unemployed that are at the center of the dispute.

[dipsydoodle]

1. The EU won't get Germany to agree to that.

Part of the issue is benefits being exported back to home countries instead of being spent within in the nation state which is paying the benefits.

As far as I'm aware Germany also expects immigrants to be either self supporting on arrival or be able to confirm how they will be so within an agreed period of time which if not met leads to their deportation anyway.