Immigrationboards.com

Hi there,

While I'm here I thought I would ask if there is anyone in the know who could tell me the end of the story (if there is one) because the anticipation is killing me.

The requirement of the Comprehensive Sickness Insurance apparently made the European Commission unhappy, that what says the document (direct download) issued by Immigration Law Practitioners' Association (ILPA):

Following complaints from ILPA and the AIRE Centre, the European Commission launched infringement proceedings against the UK on this point in April 2012. According to the Commission,

“Under the Free Movement Directive, EU citizens who settle in another EU country but do not work there may be required to have sufficient resources and sickness insurance. The United Kingdom, however, does not consider entitlement to treatment by the UK public healthcare scheme (NHS) as sufficient. This breaches EU law.”

So that was in 2012. What happened next?

And then this happened and the EU Commission was reminded that if it gets too specific and fussy about the interpretation of EU law, countries can walk out.

The Commission is only the administrative arm of the EU. It does not have the final say on interpretation of EU law, which lies with the CJEU or on EU policy, which lies with the European Council.

First of all, sorry, there's been some mixup and the links above are wrong but I cannot correct them. Here is the article (direct download) I was talking about.

So what happened? European Commission got gagged by UK's threats of leaving EU?

I'm just trying to use common sense based on the information I come across, forgive my ignorance. Why would ILPA make a complain to a body which as you say had no say on such matters, they should've known better, and which in turn "launched infringement proceedings" against the UK? If they did there must have been a mechanism in place for dealing with such matters. They didn't suddenly decide to challenge UK hoping for the best.

I understand there weren't any new court cases since then.