UK warned over migrant workers

The European Commission has issued a warning to the UK over its “discriminatory” rules for workers coming into the country from the new EU member states in Central and Eastern Europe.

The Commission has rebuked the UK government because migrant workers currently cannot claim welfare benefits if they have spent less than a year working in the UK, it argues that the workers from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland, the countries which joined the EU in 2004, should enjoy the same rights as UK nationals.

When the countries originally joined the EU, most member states kept work permit restrictions and quotas in place but these were mostly lifted a couple of years later. The Commission said that such restrictions should last no longer than seven years and must be proportionate. It reiterated the directive that workers should have the freedom to live and work in another EU member state.

The UK introduced a Worker Registration Scheme (WRS) to try and prevent “benefit tourism” in 2004. WRS applicants totalled 118,675 in 2009, with just over half the applicants coming from Poland.