“People voted”, declared a Tory MP during one of the interminable Brexit debates recently, “to end uncontrolled immigration” from the EU. Some people may have done, but if they did, what they were voting to end was nothing more than a figment of, say, Nigel Farage’s imagination. Freedom of movement within the EU was never uncontrolled. But slogans can become powerful tools. We need, said the various Leave campaigns – and later, after a rapid conversion, Theresa May – to “take back control of our borders”. The truth is that we never lost control of them.

The European Parliament’s Fact Sheet on the freedom of movement of workers certainly confirms that “every EU citizen has the right to reside in the territory of another EU country with no conditions or formalities other than the requirement to hold a valid identity card or passport.”[1] But that’s only for the first three months. After that, the country to which the EU citizen has moved has the right to take control: the host member state has the right to “require a citizen to register his or her presence within a reasonable and non-discriminatory period of time.”[2] Then the rules get tougher, as, “for EU citizens who are not workers or self-employed, the right of residence depends on their having sufficient resources not to become a burden on the host Member State’s social assistance system, and having sickness insurance.”[3] Moreover, EU citizens have no right of permanent residence in another EU country until they have completed “five years of uninterrupted legal residence”.[4]

But can’t they come and live off “our benefits” for as long as they like? No. Indeed, the European Court of Justice

recently rejected the right to benefits of an inactive EU citizen who had entered the host Member State solely for the purpose of claiming benefits (Case C-333/13 Dano): it held that the right to equal treatment, which would include access to benefits, presupposes legal residence … which the claimant did not have owing to a lack of sufficient financial means.[5]

One puzzled writer to The Guardian’s Letters page in 2017, Paul Whitaker, summed up the situation:

Since 2004, European Union law has allowed governments to control movements of European citizens as follows: allow EU citizens to freely circulate only for three months and then require them (should they want to stay longer) to show they are working (employed or self-employed), a registered student or have sufficient resources (pension, savings) to support themselves and comprehensive sickness insurance, e.g. a valid European health insurance card enabling the NHS to claim back the cost of treatment or have private health insurance. The UK is one of the few governments that has not implemented this.[6]

He then asks a pertinent question:

For six years, Theresa May was in charge of the Home Office responsible for immigration, yet did nothing to adopt these conditions. One wonders why not and why immigration was allowed to dominate the referendum and is still being paraded as a big problem. Yet another failure of our own government and the Home Office under Theresa May is being blamed on the EU. The remedy was always in the UK’s hands.[7]

But Paul Whitaker hasn’t quite got it right here at the end. For surely there was nothing to remedy, since freedom of movement was doing a lot of good to this host member state. Growing numbers of its citizens were also making the journey in the opposite direction, taking up opportunities to work or retire in other EU countries. What’s to remedy? But then came the riot of fantasy that was the EU referendum, and the panic that followed.

[1] European Parliament Fact Sheet, “Free Movement of Workers: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/en/sheet/41/free-movement-of-workers

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] “EU rules already offer a solution on freedom of movement”, Letters, The Guardian, 8 January 2017: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/08/eu-rules-already-offer-a-solution-on-freedom-of-movement

[7] Ibid.