12.11.2014 Judgment of the European Court of Justice: Social abuse remains an exception nonetheless

Various newspapers report on a recent judgment of the European Court of Justice. The object of the lawsuit was the complaint of an unemployed Romanian woman, who sued the German government, because it didn’t want to allow her to obtain any social funds. Since the woman was not actively seeking work, the European Court of Justice dismissed the complaint. However, the judgment, which is seen by some officials as a precedent against social tourism to Germany, should be seen in a critical context: social abuse is the exception, not the norm. The ethnicity of the applicant was considered by most of the media as “Romanian”. Nevertheless, in the context of the debate about the so-called “poverty immigration”, it was repeatedly claimed that primarily poor, uneducated Rroma would migrate to Germany. This polemical misrepresentation was far too little critically questioned and criticised. Therefore, it is important to rectify that most migrants are looking for work and are no social tourists: “Not social benefits in the host countries are the reasons that pull Romanians and Bulgarians abroad, but the better job and income opportunities. When in June, in Hamburg, a personnel secondment firm went broke and 230 workers from Romania and Bulgaria were left penniless, one wondered at the local job centre: only four of the persons concerned remained in the country, all the others went back home. […] Poverty migrants from Bulgaria and Romania constitute, according to figures from German or Belgian cities, only for ten percent of the immigrants – which is about the proportion of the poor population in both countries” (Mappes-Niediek 2014). Already now, 110,000 to 130,000 Rroma are living in Germany, many of them for generations. They have a job, speak German and are integrated. These invisible Rroma are constantly hidden in the often one-sided debate about the immigration of low skilled “poverty migrants”. In addition, not only Rroma migrate to Western Europe, but also ethnic Romanians, Bulgarians and members of other ethnic groups (compare Hacker-Walton 2014, Linke 2014, Preuss 2014).