What has the EU ever done for my … wanderlust?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/14/what-has-the-eu-ever-done-for-my-wanderlust

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From retirees on the Spanish coasts to young professionals in Dublin, Berlin and Bratislava, Britons have taken to EU freedom of movement with enthusiasm. Any EU citizen can move to another member state for three months and stay indefinitely if they can prove they have resources to live on.

The government estimates that 2 million Britons have moved to another EU country, although the UN puts the number at only 1.3 million. Spain is the most popular destination, followed by Ireland and France. Britons abroad are wealthier than those at home, although in 2015 a small proportion of about 30,000 were claiming benefits.

Freedom of movement was woven into the European project from the start, when six countries created the European Economic Community in 1957. In those days the stress was on free movement of workers: often Italians going to the factories and mines of Belgium and Germany.

Only in 1992 did the Maastricht treaty, the document that inflamed the Tory Euro wars, extend freedom of movement to citizens of the newly named EU. Three years later, five countries in western Europe created a passport-free travel zone, named after the village of Schengen on the Luxembourg-French-German border.

The Schengen zone harked back to the passport-free days before the first world war. The appeal of free movement had never vanished through the war years. One Labour foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, said the aim of his foreign policy was to “go down to Victoria station and take a ticket to where the hell I like without a passport”. But under Bevin, Britain rejected early moves on European cooperation. As a member of the EU, the UK has remained outside Schengen, which is now under unprecedented strain as a result of the migration crisis.

A vote to leave the EU brings uncertainty about the future of free movement as the rights of Britons living in other EU member states are thrown up in the air: pensions, healthcare and access to public services cannot be guaranteed, the government warned in a recent report.