Benefit tourism from EU's east fails to materialise

Observer blog highlights interesting statistic regarding the EU enlargement:

There are some good numbers in today's FT. Do you remember the hysteria around European Union enlargement in May last year - alarmist reports about the hordes of migrants queueing up at the border to get their piece of British welfare/free NHS treatment; Sky news desperately interviewing some poor Lithuanian tourist who happened to be getting off a coach on enlargement day?

For the record, 133,000 people from the new EU member states signed up for the Home Office worker registration scheme between May and December 2004. Up to 40 per cent of that total were already in the UK before formal EU accession in May. Only 21 have made successful benefit claims. 21.

Posted by Paul in European Union Politics at April 29, 2005 03:24 AM