20/01/2015
Unemployed Britons in Europe are drawing much more in benefits and allowances in the wealthier EU countries than their nationals are claiming in the UK, despite the British governmentâs arguments about migrants flocking in to the country to secure better welfare payments.
At least 30,000 British nationals are claiming unemployment benefit in countries around the EU, says the
Guardian, based on information from 23 of the 27 other EU countries.
Its research shows more than four times as many Britons obtain unemployment benefits in Germany as Germans do in the UK, while the number of jobless Britons receiving benefits in Ireland exceeds their Irish counterparts in the UK by a rate of five to one.
There are not only far more Britons drawing benefits in these countries than vice versa, but frequently the benefits elsewhere in Europe are much more generous than in the UK. A Briton in France receives more than three times as much as a jobless French person in the UK.
In Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, France and Ireland the number of Britons banking unemployment cheques is almost three times as high as the nationals of those countries receiving parallel UK benefits â 23,011 Britons to 8,720 nationals of those nine countries in the UK.
It then goes on to add that about 2.5 percent of Britons in other EU countries are claiming unemployment benefits â the same level as the roughly 65,000 EU nationals claiming jobseeker's allowance in the UK.
Says the paper, the findings highlight a more nuanced and complex picture across Europe than the simplistic version painted by anti-immigration and anti-EU campaigners led by Ukip and elements in the Conservative party.
And that is the truth of it. The picture is more "nuanced and complex" than anti-EU campaigners would have it, and especially those simple souls in Ukip who seem to believe that free movement of workers is an unremitting evil that must be terminated immediately, and at any cost.
Given the controls we could exercise within EFTA/EEA â not least the "emergency brake" â and given that, without the Charter of Fundamental Rights which came with the Lisbon Treaty, we could limit free movement to workers, refusing entry to dependents on people who are not economically active â there is a case to be made that freedom is tolerable as a short to medium-term price to pay for a rapid exit from the EU.
With the
Guardian findings, the equation swings even further in our favour so, without realising it, the paper has just made the case for withdrawal from the EU that much easier, having demonstrated that the net cost of retaining free movement of workers is less than we thought.
Nothing of that, of course, will satisfy the Ukip zealots, who would ditch the Single Market as the consequence of demanding a cessation of free movement, instead of being prepared to negotiate a rapid exit via temporary EEA membership and keeping the Single Market intact.
However, to the majority who aren't Ukip members, we can now say that free movement of workers is tolerable for the time being, courtesy of the
Guardian, if it means keeping the Single Market, and thereby improving our chances of winning the referendum that Mr Cameron would give us if he returns to office.
Alternatively, we could repatriate all the UK citizens currently being paid benefits by other EU Member States, and pay them the dole over here. We should not, after all, allow those awful foreigners to pay our idle unemployed for doing nothing, when they could do nothing over here.
