Unemployment Benefits, EU Migrant Workers, and the Social Cost of Protection in European Welfare States
September 2, 2019
Working Paper
Political tensions surrounding freedom of movement within the EU often arise with respect to the principle that mobile workers should have equal access to the welfare benefits of the host country. There is often a presumption that providing access to social protection programs will lead to an increase in costs. In this paper, the authors look in depth at a specific form of social protection: unemployment benefits. The paper analyses the relationships between institutional configurations in unemployment insurance among EU Member States on the one hand, and the costs and net fiscal effect of EU migrant workers on the other.
