UK to push Berlin on EU ‘welfare shopping’

Britain yesterday said it plans to use a visit by German chancellor Angela Merkel this week to try to persuade Berlin to support measures to discourage people from moving within the EU to tap welfare benefits.

If re-elected next year, Conservative prime minister David Cameron has promised to try to reform the EU before giving Britons an in/out membership referendum by the end of 2017 amid public scepticism about the bloc.

Trailing in the polls, Cameron has said he wants to eventually restrict migrants from poorer EU states relocating to richer ones like Britain to take advantage of its comparatively more generous welfare system, a practice British politicians have dubbed “welfare shopping”.