Angela Merkel says UK's future in the EU nearing a "point of no return" over the issue of free movement
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has reportedly said she fears the UK's future in the European Union (EU) is nearing a "point of no return" over the issue of free movement, BBC News reported yesterday, drawing on an article published in Germany's Der Spiegel.
According to BBC News, German government sources said this was the first time Merkel had acknowledged a possible UK exit from the EU.
As immigration becomes a key issue in the run-up to the 2015 election, David Cameron has said that freedom of movement of workers would be at the very heart of his renegotiation strategy for Europe.
However, Der Spiegel reported that Merkel rejected Cameron's demands for a cap on unskilled migrants, and she said demands for any changes to freedom of movement rules represented a "point of no return" and she would rather see the UK leave the EU.
According to the Guardian, the Sunday Times reported that Cameron has dropped plans for a cap on workers in a bid to placate the Germans and he is now looking at whether the UK can ask EU immigrants to leave the country unless they can support themselves within three months of arriving.
According to BBC News, Der Spiegel reported that Cameron was looking to stretch the EU rules "to their limits" in order to ban migrants who do not have a job.
The Telegraph reported yesterday that, despite the reported German warnings, George Osborne said the Prime Minister is determined to address "how freedom of movement operates", and signalled he will impose curbs on access to benefits for migrants.
Osborne insisted Germany "understands the disquiet" that British people feel at high migration levels.
"What we're going to address is this question of how freedom of movement operates in the twenty-first century. It was never envisaged that you would have such large numbers of people coming, people coming who don't have job offers, people who move onto our benefit system," Osborne was quoted as saying.
The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford last month published a briefing on EU migration to the UK which you can read here.
According to the briefing, data from the Labour Force Survey suggests that there are around 2.8 million EU nationals living in the UK. With the majority of EU nationals coming for employment, and finding it, the briefing concludes: "Restricting the access of EU nationals to the welfare system may be a popular policy, but under the current circumstances, it is unclear whether it will have a major impact on the number coming to live in the UK."
The Telegraph yesterday looked at exactly how many migrants claim benefits.
According to the Telegraph, data from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and HMRC shows that in 2014, only 131,000 (2.5 per cent) of the over 5 million working age benefit claimants were EU nationals. The number of non-EU claimants was 264,000 (5 per cent). The remaining 4.9 million claimants (92.6 per cent) were British.
Figures from 2013 show that 302,000 (6.4 per cent) of those receiving tax credits were EU nationals and 413,000 (8.8 per cent) were non-EU nationals.