Immigration: Those roamin’ Roma

Date: 07/02/04

The government may change the benefit system to deal with the threat that lots of poor central Europeans will turn up when the European Union expands in May

AN UNSTOPPABLE tide of British journalists is flooding into eastern Slovakia, swamping law-abiding local residents with demands for free interviews. The reason for the hacks' sudden interest in the obscurer bits of central Europe is that Britain has just woken up to one of the consequences of the enlargement of the European Union on May 1st - the free movement of people and labour, including the wretchedly poor Roma minorities of new member-states like Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

The reaction to the idea that Roma might choose to exercise their right to move to Britain has been - to put it mildly - uncharitable. The Daily Express proclaimed on January 20th - “The Roma gypsies of Eastern Europe are heading to Britain to leech on us. We do not want them here.” Reports like this prompted Denis MacShane, Britain's Europe minister, to speak out in Parliament against “rancid hate campaigns” in the British press, which he likened to the demonisation of Jewish immigrants in the 1930s. But Tony Blair is clearly feeling the pressure. On February 4th, he suggested that Britain might re-examine its “concessions” to would-be workers from the new EU members and will tighten up the welfare system to prevent possible abuse.

But while the language used by some newspapers is repellent, they may have identified a real issue. Incomes are low and unemployment rates high across much of central Europe. But conditions are much worse still for the Roma minorities, who number about 1.5m in the countries joining the EU this year, and another 3m or so in Romania and Bulgaria, which are on schedule to join in 2007. In Hungary the poverty rate is about five times greater among Roma than among non-Roma, the World Bank reported last year.

The poorest of Slovakia's 500,000 or so Roma live in clusters of wooden shacks without mains water or sewerage, on refuse-strewn wasteland, often segregated from “white Slovak” housing. Families pack into freezing huts. Roma were usually the first to lose their jobs when communism collapsed. Whole villages have been living for years on meagre child-benefit payments, charity and foraging. With no jobs to be had, parents have lost sight of the link between education and employment, so many Roma children are growing up unschooled.

Slovakia's “Roma parliament”, a community body, said last month that the favoured destinations for Roma emigrants this year would be Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and the Czech Republic. Many may be too poor to make the trip to Britain. But for those who can scrape £60 ($110) together, there is a flight from Bratislava to London.

The British government is under particular pressure because it is throwing the labour market open immediately to workers from the new member-states. The south-east of England is already awash with Polish builders and nannies. More may come in May when the remaining restrictions lapse - and a good thing too. But would those who fail to find work be eligible for welfare benefits?

That is not clear. A senior diplomat in one of the accession countries says that he has appealed to London several times for guidance, but that the answers he has received have been incomprehensible and contradictory. One thing is clear, however: EU countries cannot introduce laws that discriminate against other EU citizens on grounds of nationality, so the benefit rules that apply to Britons must apply to immigrants from the rest of the EU.

Other EU countries clearly fear that their welfare systems might be open to abuse. Last week, Goran Persson, the Swedish prime minister, said that workers from the new member-states would, “once inside our country, have access to the entire social security safety net. I expect enormous problems unless we protect ourselves.” The Swedes - and almost all other EU countries except Britain and Ireland - will require workers from eastern Europe to get work permits for the first few years.

Britain is - so far - resisting taking similar measures. British officials point out that insisting on permits for those who want to work will do nothing to roll back one of the fundamental freedoms of the EU - the freedom to move from one country to another. Even without the right to work, central European immigrants could apply for the bottom level of the British social safety net - means-tested payments such as income support and housing benefit.

To qualify for those, applicants must meet a test of “habitual residence” in Britain. This used to be defined as six months' unbroken residence, but the conditions were softened after complaints from Britons who had spent time abroad. Government officials are talking of reintroducing a well-defined “habitual residence” test.

Would such a measure - combined with the fact that the most generous benefits are restricted to people with a record of employment - solve the problem? Not necessarily. Central Europe's poor may still come, on the grounds that poverty in Britain is unlikely to be worse than destitution is Slovakia; and, as one British minister puts it, “If people are lying around on the streets, we won't leave them to die.” The burden of providing emergency housing and food would fall on local social-services departments. This kind of help is normally regarded as strictly temporary, until a more permanent solution can be found. What that solution might be in the case of Roma immigrants is unclear.

The UK government may change the benefits system to deal with the 'threat' of lots of citizens from CEE countries moving to the UK after 1 May 2004.

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