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潜在障碍是什么？残疾公民是否可以享有这些权利？这个项目试图解决这些问题，将学术理论和媒体的错误信息暴露在一些实际的现实中。欧盟移民和他们的家人是许多不了解情况的媒体报道的焦点，因为他们是福利游客，福利制度的一些“紧缩”具有反移民的意味，而福利改革的其他方面可能会对残疾移民产生不成比例的影响。事实上，维护基于欧盟法律的某些利益的平等待遇权利，或维护其他利益的跨境协调权利的程序，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申请流程是否对申请权利造成了障碍。对于越来越多的英国人来说，这是一个严重的行政司法问题。许多理论性学术研究都假定农民工享有福利待遇的权利。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不利- -造成残疾歧视问题。但这些障碍并没有得到审查，部分原因是那些在社会福利咨询部门与欧盟移民打交道的人不是欧盟专家，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给欧盟移民提供实际建议之间的差距，通过使用我对欧盟法律的技术知识，以及我的CAB案例工作经验，为客户更充分地追求欧盟权利，并记录我们在试图追求索赔人的最佳利益时遇到的障碍，并确定哪些障碍-如语言问题，具体到欧盟法律索赔。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、信息和认识问题以及不同国家福利办事处之间的行政协调程度。这种基于实践的方法是创新的，因为它需要经验，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各个阶段，否则可能无法达到，因此创造了研究行政程序和障碍的机会，否则这些都不会被审查。在获得基于欧盟的福利权利方面存在的障碍，让人对整个协调体系的一致性产生了质疑，这表明欧盟的主张在行政文化上存在某种敌意，这反过来又导致了公民身份和问责制的问题。追求欧盟权利的障碍将导致这些“权利”的不平衡分配，因此本项目将考虑这些障碍在残疾背景下的影响，并检查它们是否可能不成比例地影响残疾人获得欧盟权利——这种影响本身就违背了欧盟原则。这不仅会引发关于欧洲公民身份意义的重大问题，以及欧盟权利是否仍然按照只迎合特权阶层的“花花公子指令”原则运作，而且还会为确定在可能的情况下适应/调整程序的方法提供机会。除了一些学术成果外，我还计划制作一个“为欧盟移民提供建议”的工具包，以帮助确定权利，在索赔过程中提供顾问，标记潜在的障碍，并提出解决这些问题的策略。我的研究结果也应纳入政策文件，为行政决策者提供信息和建议，并为争取行政公正、为欧盟移民和/或残疾人的利益而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.