As the U.K. prepares to vote on whether to leave the European Union, Britain scored a victory at the bloc’s top court in its fight to restrict the access to welfare benefits for migrant workers.
“The U.K. can require recipients of child benefit and child tax credit to have a right to reside in the U.K.,” the EU Court of Justice said in a ruling in Luxembourg on Tuesday.
The decision comes days before U.K. nationals will vote on the country’s EU membership. How the bloc deals with asylum seekers and migrant workers has become one of the most contentious points of the Brexit campaign. The biggest influx of refugees to Europe since World War II has put the region’s migration system under severe pressure.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive authority, brought the challenge against the U.K. in 2014, arguing that the conditions imposed on foreigners to get access to family benefits were discriminatory and in breach of the bloc’s rules. The Brussels-based EU watchdog said it would comment later.
‘Leave’ Camp
A defeat for the U.K. government could have been a shot in the arm for the “Leave” campaign. But Professor John Curtice at Strathclyde University, one of the U.K.’s leading experts on polling, said ahead of the ruling that a victory for the British government may not be something the “Remain” camp will want to shout from the rooftops.
“I would be surprised if the ‘Remain’ side would particularly want to use it,” Curtice said ahead of the ruling. It “doesn’t want to remind people that there is the European Court of Justice in the first place.”
The pound and European stocks plunged on Tuesday with just nine days of campaigning left before the June 23 referendum. After a series of new polls on Monday put “Leave” ahead, the day’s final blow came when the Sun, Britain’s biggest-selling newspaper, backed a so-called Brexit on its front page.
‘Numerous Complaints’
The court challenge was based on “numerous complaints” the commission had received from non-U.K. citizens residing in the country. Britain argued that imposing a condition such as the right to lawfully reside in the country was in line with EU rules, even if it meant that this made it harder for non-U.K. nationals to get access to such benefits.
While this created a situation of unequal treatment, “this difference in treatment can be justified by a legitimate objective such as the need to protect the finances” of the host country, a five-judge panel at the EU court ruled.
Tuesday’s ruling, which can’t be appealed, follows a decision at the top court on the legal rights for asylum seekers who are sent against their will to another EU nation.
It “shows that the EU’s free movement rules do not prevent member states from taking action to block access to benefits for migrants who have been in the U.K. for less than five years,” according to the Institute for Public Policy Research, a London-based think tank.
But “it is likely to also remind voters that aspects of the U.K.’s welfare system are subject to EU law,” the IPPR said.
(Updates with comment from think tank and academic starting in fifth paragraph.)
To contact the reporter on this story: Stephanie Bodoni in Brussels at sbodoni@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net, Peter Chapman, Stephanie Bodoni
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