EU’s top court backs Britain’s right to limit child benefits to European migrants
Iain Duncan Smith says the lengthy legal battle is another example of why Britons should vote to leave the EU
BRITAIN can stop EU benefit tourists claiming handouts for their kids within days of arriving here after the bloc’s highest court threw out a complaint from Brussels today.
The European Commission moaned that a strict three month residency test on child benefit and child tax credit was discriminatory against European citizens wanting to travel around the continent under free movement rules.
But in a landmark ruling the European Court of Justice argued the policy was justified by “the need to protect the finances of the host member state”.
Since 2014 the UK has refused to pay the two benefits – worth up to £3,856.40 a year for the first child– to jobless new arrivals who have been here for less than three months, or immigrants who have failed to find a job for six months.
The Luxembourg-based ECJ’s verdict to back that opened up a furious new row in the EU referendum debate.
Britain has won the right to limit child benefits to European migrants after a lengthy legal battle
Remain campaigners including the Government hailed the decision as proof the UK has control over benefit decisions.
But the Leave camp argued it was “absurd” that an EU court can rule over our tax and social security system.
A Government spokesman said: “The UK welcomes the judgment, which supports the Government’s view that we are entitled to ensure only EU migrants who have a right to be in the UK can claim our benefits.
“Once again this confirms that member states have the ability to protect their own national welfare systems.”
Pro-EY Tory former Attorney General Dominic Grieve added: “This underlines the fact that Britain has been successful in arguing for an end to something for nothing for EU citizens coming to Britain. They can no longer take out before the put in. It proves Britain has more influence over the rules that affect us as part of the EU.”
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But Brexit-backing former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith blasted: “It’s absurd that we have to run every nut and bolt of domestic policy past Luxembourg, and then engage in lengthy and expensive court battles if they decide they don’t like what our democratically-elected Government is doing.
“As well as the cost to taxpayers of fighting these lengthy drawn-out cases, it’s clearly an illegitimate challenge to our sovereignty.
“Although David Cameron didn’t want to admit it, this case and others like it are proof positive that the unelected European Court of Justice is now supreme above our elected Parliament.
"They decide the rules and the only way to prevent this kind of intervention in future is to vote Leave on June 23.”
It is the latest in a string of judgments to go in the UK’s favour in recent months – seen as the ECJ being careful ahead of the In-Out referendum following years of controversial rulings.
Marley Morris, research fellow at the IPP think tank, warned: “There are no guarantees that this will last for ever, and future judgments may go against the UK.”
And pro-Brexit Tory MP Anne-Marie Trevelyan said: “We have consistently been defeated and sidelined in the meddling European courts.
“Judgments have made the cost of living more expensive, undermined our borders and put UK security at risk.”