A heated debate is going on in the European Union about poverty driven immigration. During negotiations on how to tackle the problem the different EU member states are struggling to maintain control over their individual social security systems. But to what extent can this be possible in view of recent rulings of the European Court of Justice? How many unemployed EU citizens claim benefits in the frame of their host countries’ systems of social transfers? Over the past few years the European Court of Justice has frequently ruled in favor of EU-citizens' rights, strengthening the claims of citizens from EU member states to unemployment benefits.
This is now the topic an international project group embedded in the University of Bremen. In the project with the title “Transnationalization and the judicialization of welfare” (TransJudFare) the Bremen researchers are working together with partners in Copenhagen, Salzburg and Amsterdam to shed light on this tricky aspect of social benefits and the impact of such judicial decisions on national systems of social security. The project is led and coordinated by political scientist, Professor Susanne K. Schmidt from the University of Bremen’s Institute for Intercultural and International Studies (InIIS). TransJudFare is supported by NORFACE, a network comprising 15 national research organizations. The German side is funded by the German Research Foundation. Over a three-year period, the project researchers will be investigating developments in a total of five different countries: Germany, Great Britain, Denmark, Austria and the Netherlands. NORFACE is funding the project in an amount of one million euros, of which 360,000 will accrue to the University of Bremen.
Project background:
The collaborative project is carrying out a comparative study of the abovementioned five member states. They want to find out whether residents from other EU member states are entitled to social benefits in their host countries, to what extent they make use of such entitlements and how the issue is being treated in the surrounding political debate. Their investigations are not restricted to the various measures of social security: They also want to find out to what extent students from other EU member states are entitled to student grants like the German BAföG.
Do these member states fulfill their European obligations? Do they sometimes withhold previously agreed to services, or are their national criteria for granting benefits so broadly couched as to encourage poverty-driven immigration? This has repeatedly been argued by the EU Commission. Many such entitlements to social security only arise in the first place from the case-law of the European Court of Justice. The project will investigate to what extent the member states adhere to these rulings and whether we might be witnessing a “judicialization” of the law on social security.
If you would like to have more information on this topic, please contact:
University of Bremen
Faculty of Social Sciences
Institute for Intercultural and International Studies
Dr. Benjamin Werner
Phone: +49 421/218-674 69
e-mail: bwernerprotect me ?!uni-bremenprotect me ?!.de
