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CYIL 7 ȍ2016Ȏ
SAVING THE EU AND ITS WELFARE STATES THROUGH DISINCENTIVES…
The CJEU thus defends the foundation that European integration has historically
been built on, i.e. the equal, non-discriminatory and friendly treatment of those
who want to be economically active in another Member State. By adhering to this
pragmatic basis of integration the CJEU seems to be strengthening the barrier that
the Heads of the EU States and Governments are apparently seeking to cross, if we
believe in their Conclusions approved at the European Council in February 2016.
Here the EU supreme leaders admit the necessity to limit flows of workers of a certain
scale and also to impose on them some restrictive conditions in relation to certain
benefits, in order to ensure first that there is a real and effective degree of connection
between the person concerned and the labor market of the host Member State. The
“sacrifice” of rights of economically inactive EU-migrants in the recent CJEU case
law looks like a minor retreat compared to the planned reduction of equal treatment
of EU-workers who might not be eligible for certain types of benefits for themselves
and their family members for several years of employment in another Member State.
It is to be hoped that the CJEU, which used to be seen in the UK-Brexit debate
as the greatest potential complication for concessions agreed between the British
Prime Minister and the rest of the EU statesmen, will not budge from its definition of
migrant EU-worker and his rights in the Member State of his genuine and effective
employment at least until the Member States have overcome the present period of
EU-negativism and begin to look for common European solutions rather than for
measures degrading the EU
acquis
. No one can deny that labor migration may raise
pressures on the welfare systems that remain based on national solidarity. There is
no doubt that any further expansion of rights derived directly from EU citizenship,
without actually requiring certain “obligations” (expressed rather as limitations of the
full exercise of the rights), would only further undermine the willingness of Europeans
to any mutual solidarity. The question is whether these problems can be solved by
interference in the rights of migrant EU-workers, who would, in their claims to
welfare, depend on exemptions applied differently in different Member States.
EU decision-makers and legislators should rather not test the resistance of judges
in Luxembourg by taking measures that would throw European integration decades
back, but should better look for a consensus on EU-friendly solutions that have
already been proposed from many sides. Why not to establish a European Mobility
Fund to assist a Member State reporting disproportionate pressure exerted by EU-
migrants on its welfare system?
65
In the same vein, an EU scheme for the payment of
certain benefits to the unemployed who decide to look for a job in another Member
State, i.e. for situations treated in the cases
Alimanovic
and
García-Nieto
, could
also be envisaged as well as the EU or Eurozone unemployment insurance scheme
65
CATHARINA SORENSEN, ‘Some solutions for the EU social benefits debate.’ <https://euobserver.
com/opinion/124536> accessed 22 April 2016. It was proposed to finance this new Moblity Fund
through transfers from other EU funds with unused means.