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ABSTRACT
This article traces domestic legislative and administrative reactions to case law by the European Court of Justice in the area of EU Citizenship, free movement and cross-border welfare rights. Specifically, it contributes to existing Europeanisation research by highlighting the role of politicisation in the implementation process. The empirical case study analyses EU students’ free movement and cross-border welfare rights in England, based on an original data collection of newspaper articles, semi-structured expert interviews and policy documents. The analysis thus innovatively combines both quantitative and qualitative analysis of politicisation, explicating an otherwise puzzling ten-years delayed policy change in the English study finance system. Ultimately, the case study is exemplary for the struggle in striking a delicate balance between open borders and sustainable public funds under EU non-discrimination provisions, which many other member states similarly face.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful for constructive comments by Susanne K. Schmidt, Arndt Wonka, Dorte Sindbjerg Martinsen, and Benjamin Werner on this paper and its earlier versions. I thank Lukas Antoine and Pauline Anton for excellent research support.
Notes
1 Telegraph (2010) ‘Why should we pay to educate French and Latvian students?’ The Daily Telegraph, 22 March.
2 Student support is regulated differently in the four countries England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. This analysis will focus on England, which is the country that had been addressed by respective ECJ case law.
3 Actors include: society (i.e. all non-organised actors and individuals), associations, government/administration, parliament/political parties. Actors were coded maximum one time and for maximum one primary category (e.g. only government and not political party if in government) per core sentence.
4 After the completion of all codings, a set of codings from all categories and across the time frame had been reviewed to ensure consistency of codings.
5 See Statutory Instruments 2005 nos. 1341 and 2084, amendments to the Education (Student Support) Regulations 2005.
6 See Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998.
7 See Statutory Instruments 2010 nos. 3020 and 3021, the Higher Education (Higher Amount) and (Basic Amount) (England) Regulations.
8 This amount of GBP 2.2 billion represents 2.1% of overall public spending on tuition fee loans.
9 Blauberger et al. (Citation2018, p. 1433) have shown that the total number of articles across five Western EU member states (including several newspapers for each country) on cross-border welfare more generally amounted to roughly 100 in 2012 and to a peak of 900 in 2014.
10 Telegraph (2004) ‘Students face EU fight for places,’ The Daily Telegraph, 4 March.
11 Telegraph (2005) ‘European student had right to UK loan,’ The Daily Telegraph, 16 March.
12 Telegraph (2005) ‘Foreign students 'will evade millions in university fees',’ The Daily Telegraph 11 June.
13 Telegraph (2005) ‘Taxpayers' pounds 50m bill for EU students,’ The Daily Telegraph, 10 August.
14 Telegraph (2006) ‘Agents will chase student fees,’ The Daily Telegraph, 24 May.
15 Telegraph (2012) ‘Nearly half EU students 'fail to repay loans',’ The Telegraph Online, 10 August.
16 Telegraph (2014) ‘EU students 'fail to repay record £40m in university loans',’ The Telegraph Online, 23 June.
17 Telegraph (2012) ‘Thousands of EU students fail to replay loans,’ Telegraph.co.uk, 21 January.
18 Cf. note 19 above.
19 Telegraph (2012) ‘Foreign students owe millions to Britain,’ The Sunday Telegraph, 3 June; Telegraph (2014) ‘University reforms 'will lead to surge in students from EU',’ The Telegraph Online, 18 September.
20 Cf. note 21 above.
21 Telegraph (2013) ‘Foreign student loans,’ The Daily Telegraph, 25 March.
22 Cf. note 17 above.
23 Telegraph (2012) ‘Funding for EU students soars by £50m in two years,’ The Telegraph Online, 5 October.
24 Telegraph (2013) ‘Britain hands over £100m to Polish students,’ The Telegraph Online, 1 February.
25 Telegraph (2013) ‘Student loans bill for EU undergraduates tops £100m,’ The Telegraph Online, 8 March.
26 Cf. note 18 above.
27 Telegraph (2013) ‘Thousands of Europeans 'failing to repay debts',’ The Telegraph Online, 28 November.
28 Telegraph (2013) ‘Student loans to Bulgarians and Romanians frozen,’ The Telegraph Online, 19 November.
29 Among others: Telegraph (2013) ‘Freeze on loans to students from Bulgaria and Romania,’ The Daily Telegraph, 20 November; Telegraph (2014) ‘Student loans to be investigated,’ The Daily Telegraph, 23 May; Telegraph (2014) ‘Loans to foreign students blocked,’ The Telegraph Online, 14 June; Telegraph (2014) ‘EU students wrongly claimed £5.4m to study in the UK,’ The Telegraph Online, 2 December; Telegraph (2014) ‘Illiterate builder in £400,000 fake student loan trafficking scam, court hears,’ The Telegraph Online, 2 December; Telegraph (2014) ‘Private colleges risk 'tarnishing the reputation' of UK higher education system,’ The Telegraph Online, 14 December.
30 Telegraph (2014) ‘Probe launched into waste of money at 'cashpoint college',’ The Telegraph Online, 22 May.
31 Similarly, other studies have shown in how far EU-15 member states had generally underestimated the size of migration from Central and Eastern Europe following the 2004 and 2007 enlargement rounds (cf. Toshkov and Kortenska, Citation2015: 914). Thanks to one anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.
32 Telegraph (2014) ‘Ministers to crackdown on escalating EU student loans bill,’ The Telegraph Online, 1 September.