Free Movement in the European Union: National Institutions vs Common Policies?
| Date | 01 December 2017 |
| Author | Martin Ruhs |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12398 |
| Published date | 01 December 2017 |
Free Movement in the European Union:
National Institutions vs Common Policies?
Martin Ruhs*
ABSTRACT
The current rules for “free movement”in the European Union (EU) facilitate unrestricted
intra-EU labour mobility and equal access to national welfare states for EU workers. The sus-
tainability of this policy has recently been threatened by divisive debates between EU coun-
tries about the need to restrict welfare benefits for EU workers. This article develops a theory
for why the current free movement rules might present particular challenges for certain EU
member states. It focuses on the potential roles of three types of national institutions and social
norms in determining national policy positions on free movement in the EU15 states: labour
markets (especially their “flexibility”); welfare states (especially their “contributory basis”);
and citizenship norms (focusing on the “European-ness”of national identities). I show that
these institutions and norms vary across member states and explain why we can expect these
differences to contribute to divergent national policy preferences for reforming free movement.
1 INTRODUCTION
The free movement of workers is one of the fundamental freedoms of the European Union (EU). It
gives citizens of EU countries the right to move freely and take up employment in any other EU
country and –as long as they are “workers”–the right to full and equal access to the host coun-
try’s welfare state. This combination of unrestricted intra-EU migration and equal access to national
welfare states for EU workers is an important exception to the tension and trade-off between immi-
gration and access to social rights that characterizes the labour immigration policies of high-income
countries (Ruhs, 2013). Free movement thus challenges long-standing theories and claims about the
alleged incompatibility of open borders and inclusive welfare states (see, for example, Freeman,
1986).
EU member states have in recent years been engaged in a divisive political debate about the
future sustainability of free movement in its current form. A group of member states, most notably
the UK but also including Denmark, Netherlands and Austria, has called for more restricted access
for EU workers to welfare benefits. The UK justified its call for reforming free movement by argu-
ing that Britain’s welfare state is fundamentally different (“less contributory”) and “exceptional”
compared to the welfare states of most other EU member states.
1
Many other EU countries have
been sceptical and opposed to fundamental and permanent reform, insisting that the current policy
of unrestricted access to labour markets and full and equal access to welfare states for EU workers
must continue. The perceived failure of the British government to convince the rest of the EU to
reform free movement, or to recognize the UK as a “special case”that requires different mobility
policies, was a major factor in the UK’s recent referendum vote to leave the EU.
* University of Oxford
doi: 10.1111/imig.12398
©2017 The Author
International Migration ©2017 IOM
International Migration Vol. 55 (S1) 2017
ISS N 00 20- 7985 Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
The recent debates about the future of free movement raise fundamental research and policy
questions about the types and degrees of institutional variations across EU member states, the
potential tensions between national institutions and common EU regulations, and the implications
for the economic, social and political sustainability of the current rules for intra-EU labour mobility
in the medium- to long-term. This article presents preliminary ideas for a theoretical and empirical
research agenda that addresses these questions The aim of the article is to provide a conceptual
framework and hypotheses for analysing the role of three types of national institutions and social
norms in determining national policy positions on free movement in the EU: national labour mar-
kets (especially their regulation and “flexibility”); welfare states (especially their “contributory
basis”); and citizenship norms (with a focus on the “European-ness”of national identities). I argue
that the flexibility of the national labour market plays an important role in shaping the scale and
characteristics of EU labour immigration; the contributory basis of the welfare states shapes the fis-
cal effects and perceived fairness of free movement; and the degree of “European-ness”of individ-
ual and collective identities in a country influences how broadly the “national interest”is defined
by drawing boundaries around the perceived “target population”(ranging from “national citizens
only”to “all EU citizens”) whose best interests free movement is meant to serve from a national
policy perspective.
The core hypotheses developed in this article are as follows: in countries that have both a rela-
tively flexible labour market and a relatively non-contributory welfare state “free movement”can
generate specificfiscal costs and economic tensions that are not present, at least not to the same
degree, in countries characterized by more regulated labour markets and/or more contributory wel-
fare states. Whether or not these specific costs and tensions contribute to the development of a
national policy preference for restricting the welfare benefits for EU workers depends critically on
how narrowly or broadly the national interest is defined. A broader and more “European”percep-
tion of national identity will, I suggest, make it less likely that any domestic costs and tensions
arising from free movement will lead to domestic pressure for policy change. These hypotheses are
based on a conceptualization of national policy-making that emphasizes the application of a “ra-
tionalist”logic in the state’s pursuit of the “national interest”but also takes account of institutions
and the role of ideas in reconfiguring state interests and determining policy outcomes.
The exploratory empirical analysis in this article shows that the flexibility of national labour mar-
kets, contributory basis of national welfare states and the “European-ness”of national identities dif-
fer considerably across EU member states. Given my conceptual framework and hypotheses, these
variations suggest the UK as the most likely candidate for demanding reforms of free movement,
followed by Ireland which is similar to the UK in terms of the flexibility of its labour market and
contributory basis of its welfare state, but different in terms of the (much higher) European dimen-
sion of the perceived personal and collective identities of its citizens. I argue that the conceptual
framework and hypotheses proposed in this article have the potential to help explain variations in
national policy preferences for reforming free movement across EU member states. The next step
of this research agenda is to “test”these hypotheses by conducting systematic and in-depth empiri-
cal analysis of the determinants of the changing national policy positions on free movement across
EU15 member states. This future research will of course have to consider the roles and effects of
potential policy determinants that go beyond national institutions/norms and include a wide range
of actors (such as political parties, especially populist parties, and interest groups) as well as the
likely inter-relationships between the national politics of free movement and the wider politics of
immigration and EU membership.
The article is structured as follows. The analysis begins, in section 2, with a brief discussion of the
current rules and changing politics of free movement of workers in the European Union. Section 3
then provides a conceptual framework and hypotheses for analysing the potential inter-relationships
between national labour markets, welfare states and citizenship norms on the one hand, and the
domestic politics of free movement in EU member states on the other hand. This conceptual and
Free Movement in the European Union 23
©2017 The Author. International Migration ©2017 IOM
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