EU court backs UK’s migrant child benefit limits

Brussels / AFP

The EU’s top court on Tuesday backed Britain’s right to limit child benefits to European migrants, a hot-button issue in Britain’s referendum on its future in the European Union next week.
The decision comes as a series of opinion polls show a growing lead for the campaign for a “Brexit,” despite Prime Minister David Cameron’s appeals for people to vote to remain. The European Commission, the executive arm of the 28-nation bloc, had challenged Britain’s right to deny some EU migrants access to welfare benefits for children on the grounds that they did not have lawful “right of residence”. But the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that London does have the right to check whether they were lawful residents, based on whether the migrants had the economic means to ensure they would not be a burden on British taxpayers.
“The UK can require recipients of child benefit and child tax credit to have a right to reside in the UK,” the Luxembourg-based court said in its judgement. “Although that condition is considered to amount to indirect indiscrimination, it is justified by the need to protect the finances of the host member state.”
The ruling in Britain’s favour had been largely expected.
The top legal adviser to the ECJ had given a similar opinion in October, and a defeat would have been a major blow to the campaign to stay in the EU.
Campaigners for Britain to leave the bloc complain that London’s sovereignty is undermined by the EU and particularly by rulings by the ECJ that overrule national decisions.
Britain’s right to limit such child benefits was at the heart of a renegotiation deal that Cameron secured at a European Union summit in February to put before voters in the June 23 referendum.
The deal—which will only take effect if Britain votes to stay in the EU—will also limit the amount of child benefits that EU migrants living in Britain can send back to their home countries.