Realising EU welfare rights: administrative gatekeeping and the accessibility of EU law

欧盟权利在实践中意味着什么？在英国获得欧盟权利的隐藏障碍是什么？残疾公民可以享有这些权利吗？这个项目试图解决这些问题，将学术理论和媒体错误信息暴露在一些现实中。作为福利游客，欧盟移民及其家人是许多不了解情况的媒体报道的焦点，一些福利制度的收紧带有反移民的意味，而福利改革的其他方面很可能对残疾移民产生不成比例的影响。事实上，主张享有某些福利基于欧盟法律的平等待遇或为其他福利提供跨境协调的权利的程序，涉及援引极其复杂的欧盟法律条款。该项目询问欧盟移民的社会援助和社会保障福利的申领程序是否为申领权利设置了障碍。对于越来越多的英国人口来说，这是一个严重的行政正义问题。许多理论学术研究都假定农民工福利权利的存在。然而，在实践中，追求这些权利可能是困难的，索赔人遇到的障碍可能对残疾人特别有害--造成残疾歧视问题。但这些障碍尚未得到审查，部分原因是那些在社会福利咨询部门与欧盟移民一起工作的人不是欧盟专家，因此欧盟的权利没有得到充分追求。这个项目弥合了学术法律理论和那些向欧盟移民提供实践建议的人之间的差距，利用我对欧盟法律的技术知识和我在CAB案件中的工作经验，为客户更全面地追求欧盟的权利，并记录下我们在努力追求索赔人的最佳利益时遇到的障碍，并确定其中哪些障碍--例如语言问题--是欧盟法律索赔特有的。这些问题可能包括额外的程序要求或证据负担、翻译和理解问题、信息和意识问题，以及不同国家福利机构之间的行政协调程度。这种以实践为基础的方法是创新的，因为它采用了经验、社会法律和行政方法来研究欧盟法律。它将使我能够达到索赔的阶段，否则可能达不到，因此创造了研究行政程序和障碍的机会，否则这些程序和障碍将不被审查。获得基于欧盟的福利权利的障碍令人质疑整个协调体系的连贯性，这表明了行政文化对欧盟主张的敌意，这反过来又导致了公民身份和问责问题。追求欧盟权利的障碍将导致这些“权利”分布不均，因此本项目将考虑这些障碍在残疾背景下的影响，并审查它们对残疾人获得欧盟权利的潜在不成比例的影响--这种影响本身就违反了欧盟的原则。这不仅会引发关于欧洲公民身份含义的大问题，以及欧盟的权利是否仍然遵循《花花公子指令》的原则，只为特权阶层服务，而且它还将打开机会，找出在可能的情况下适应/调整程序的方法。除了一些学术成果外，我还计划制作一个“建议欧盟移民”的工具包，帮助确定权利，在索赔过程中向顾问提供咨询，指出潜在的障碍，并提出解决这些障碍的策略。我的研究结果还应该被纳入政策文件，向行政决策者提供信息并提出建议，并为倡导行政正义和为欧盟移民和/或残疾人的利益工作的组织提供证据。

What do EU rights mean in practice? What are the hidden barriers to accessing EU rights in the UK? Are those rights accessible for citizens with disabilities? This project seeks to tackle these questions, to expose academic theory, and media misinformation, to some practical reality. EU migrants, and their families are the focus of much ill-informed media coverage as benefit tourists, and some of the 'tightening' of the benefits system has anti-migrant undertones while other aspects of welfare reform may well impact disproportionately on migrants with disabilities. In fact the procedures for asserting rights to EU-law based equal treatment for some benefits, or to cross-border co-ordination for others, involve invoking fiendishly complex EU legal provisions. This project asks whether the claims processes for social assistance and social security benefits for EU migrants create barriers to claiming entitlements. This is a serious question of administrative justice for an increasing section of the UK population. Much theoretical academic study presumes the existence of a migrant worker rights to welfare benefits. However, in practice the pursuit of those rights can be difficult, and the barriers claimants encounter may be especially detrimental to persons with disabilities - creating problems of disability discrimination. But these barriers have not been examined, partly because those working with EU migrants in the social welfare advice sector are not EU specialists, so that EU rights are not fully pursued. This project bridges the gap between the academic legal theory and those giving practical advice to EU migrants, by using both my technical knowledge of EU law, and my CAB case work experience, to pursue EU rights more fully for clients, and to document the barriers we encounter in trying to pursue claimants' best interests, and identify which of those barriers - such as language issues, are specific to EU legal claims. These might include extra procedural requirements or evidential burdens, translation and comprehension issues, problems with information and awareness and the degree of administrative co-ordination between different national benefit offices. This practice-based method is innovative because it takes an empirical, socio-legal and administrative approach to the study of EU law. It will allow me to reach stages of a claim that might not otherwise be reached, so creating the opportunity to study administrative procedures and barriers, which would otherwise go unexamined. Barriers to accessing EU-based rights to welfare call into question the coherence of the co-ordination system as a whole, suggesting something about administrative cultural hostility to EU claims, which in turn leads to questions of citizenship and accountability. Barriers to the pursuit of EU rights will result in an uneven distribution of those 'rights', so this project will consider the impact of those barriers in the context of disability, and examine them as potentially disproportionately affecting access to EU rights for persons with disabilities - an effect that in itself would be contrary to EU principles. This will not only raise big questions about the meaning of European citizenship, and whether EU rights still operate along the principles of the 'playboy directive' by catering only for the privileged, but it will also open up opportunities to identify ways of accommodating/adjusting procedures where possible. As well as a number of academic outputs, I plan to produce an 'advising EU migrants' toolkit, to help identify rights, to take adviser through the claims process, to flag up potential barriers, and suggest strategies for tackling them. My results should also feed into policy papers, to inform, and make suggestions to, administrative decision-makers, and to provide evidence for organisations campaigning for administrative justice and working in the interests of EU migrants and/or persons with disabilities.