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Case and Comment
THE recent judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union in the case of Dano (ECLI:EU:C:2014:2358) clarified some important points as regards access to social welfare benefits by EU citizens who move to another Member State. Furthermore, the judgment could have broad implications for any attempts by the UK Government to renegotiate the UK's membership of the EU, which is likely to focus on benefits for EU citizens coming to the UK. This note is an updated and expanded version of my analysis on the EU Law Analysis blog: http://eulawanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/benefit-tourism-by-eu-citizens-cjeu.html.
Mrs. Dano is a Romanian citizen who applied for job-seekers' benefits in Germany. She has not worked in Germany, and is not looking for work either. Her application was for a "special non-contributory cash benefit", as defined by the EU Regulation on coordination of social security rules for the purposes of free movement of EU citizens (Reg. 883/2004, OJ 2004 L 166/1). Issues also arose as regards the EU's Citizens' Rights Directive (Dir. 2004/38, OJ 2004 L 158/77), which provides (in Article 24(2)) that EU citizens are entitled to equal treatment regarding benefits on the territory of another Member State, except during their first three months of entry, if they are job-seekers, or if they are seeking student grants before five years' residence.
The CJEU said that these exceptions to the equal treatment rule in the citizens' Directive did not apply to Mrs. Dano, since she did not fall within any of the three categories of people who were excluded from that rule. However, the Court then ruled that she could nevertheless not invoke the equal treatment rule, for the more fundamental reason that she did not qualify to be covered by the citizens' Directive in the first place.
Some people have the impression that all EU citizens can move and reside in any other Member State without restrictions. However, the citizens' Directive sets some limits. In order to stay in another Member State for more than three months and for up to a period of five years, Article 7 of the Directive requires that the EU citizen must be a worker, a self-employed person, a student, or otherwise have sufficient resources. After five...