UK owes our citizens unpaid welfare, say Slovakia and Czech Republic
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Version 0 of 1. Slovakia and the Czech Republic are demanding that Britain pay millions of pounds in unemployment benefit to their nationals who once worked in the UK but are now unemployed at home. In a case that will revive arguments in Britain and Brussels over who has responsibility for social welfare payments to European Union citizens, the Czech labour minister, Michaela Marksová-Tominová, told local radio that Britain still owed about £2m (€2.6m)in benefits for citizens who worked and paid national insurance contributions in the UK but have since returned to the Czech Republic, where they are jobless. Under EU regulations, the Czech Republic has a right to claim unemployment benefits from Britain for these citizens and £800,000 has already been paid to the country under this rule. Marksová, however, has demanded that the remaining £2m should also be paid. Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the Slovakian labour ministry, Barbora Petrová, said Bratislava was also seeking €6.3m (£4.9m) from Britain in outstanding unemployment benefits. The unemployment rate in Slovakia is 14%, though it is just 7% in the Czech Republic, but one in five young Czechs is out of work and one in three Slovaks under 25 (PDF). The two countries are discussing how and whether this amount will be paid, although Britain claims that €1.7m of it is not legitimate. “We do not agree with their reasons of not accepting and have made a complaint,” she said. “We are going to solve the problem through our representatives in Brussels.” A spokesman for the labour ministry, Petr Sulek, confirmed to the Guardian that Czech officials had met their British counterparts at the end of August, and were told that Britain may reconsider its position. A decision over whether Britain will pay the full amount is expected later this year. “This change in attitude has to be confirmed by British politicians,” Sulek said. “Britain is the only European Union country that does not accept the European regulation and its attitude to the unemployment benefits refund has been very restrictive. Since 2012, the Czech ministry has been solving the problem directly with Great Britain and also at a European Union level.” Sulek confirmed that the European commission received a request last year to investigate how Britain was dealing with the issue. The Czech ministry said it would write to Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, to ask him to reconsider British policy on paying these benefits. Czech officials have also launched a debate about the issue within the Visegrad Group – a alliance of central European body set up in the 1990s to coordinate the attempts by Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia to join the EU. |