Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-09-06-Speech-3-034"
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"en.20000906.2.3-034"2
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". – I should like to congratulate the rapporteur. We are dealing here with a long-overdue overhaul of a number of directives relating to rights of residents of the non-economically active. My starting-point, as was the rapporteur's, is that we should give European Union citizenship real meaning. The Treaty statement that every citizen should have the right to move and reside freely within the territory of Member States and the reality are still far apart.
I draw on the experience of a number of language students from other Member States in my own constituency. They received a standard letter from our local social security office asking them to attend for a two-hour interview and to bring with them as many items as possible on a non-exhaustive list of about twenty documents such as a passport, bank statements, or household bills to "establish their identity". When I enquired further about this I was told that it was not an EU matter, because the same letter would be sent to UK residents. In what circumstances I cannot imagine. And, the two hour time-scale, even more ludicrously, was supposed to save them from a car parking fine in the local car-park!
I would not want to see any citizens treated in the same way as these students. The history of the directives that deal with the rights of residence of the non-economically active is an unhappy one: non-implementation, infringement proceedings, a patchwork of different and burdensome requirements. You can move a sack of potatoes around Europe more easily than a citizen can move. If we are to appeal to our citizens and the basic right of free movement is to be real, then simple, fast codification of this area of Community law is long overdue. Then, and only then, will the Treaty statement on European Union citizenship become a reality instead of mere words."@en1
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