Welfare benefit curbs on EU migrants in UK

LONDON — Prime Minister David Cameron yesterday promised to make it harder for migrants from the European Union to access Britain’s welfare system and pledged to try to restrict the freedom of movement of people from poorer EU states in time.
His plan, an attempt to address public fears about an influx of Romanians and Bulgarians when EU restrictions on those two countries expire next year, drew a rebuke from the European Commission which said his intervention was “an unfortunate over-reaction”.
But Cameron, whose Conservative party risks seeing its vote split at European elections next year and at a national election in 2015 by the anti-immigration UK Independence Party, is under pressure to act at a time when he is trailing in the polls.

He has said he will try to renegotiate Britain’s membership of the EU to give it more of a say over its own affairs and has promised to hold an in/out referendum if re-elected in 2015 amid public scepticism about the benefits of belonging to the bloc.
“The EU of today is very different from the EU of 30 years ago,” Cameron said in an article in the Financial Times.
“We need to face the fact that free movement has become a trigger for vast population movements caused by huge disparities in income. That is extracting talent out of countries that need to retain their best people and placing pressure on communities.” — Reuters