Everybody in Europe benefits from freedom of movement within the EU. This is one of the greatest achievements of the European unification process, and most people can no longer imagine life without it. Citizens from other EU countries come to live and work in Germany. The vast majority of them respect national and European rules and regulations.

What is freedom of movement?
Every citizen of an EU member state is entitled to move freely within the EU, to enter every other EU member state and to reside there. Freedom of movement within the Single Market means that EU citizens can engage in economic activity in every member state, as employees or in a self-employed capacity, permanently or temporarily.

All EU citizens have an entitlement

Under current EU law, citizens of EU member countries who live or work in Germany are entitled to receive child benefit in line with the provisions of Germany’s Income Tax Act (Einkommensteuergesetz). This also applies when their children continue to live in another member state. In this case too they are entitled to receive standard child benefit in Germany.

How many children are affected?
This June a total of 15.29 million children received child benefit. Of this total 12.27 million were German and about three million non-German children. Most of the children with non-German passports receiving child benefit do in fact live in Germany. Only 268,336 received German child benefit while living in another EU member state. Conversely, parents also received child benefit for 31,512 German children living in other countries, to pursue a course of studies for instance.

Tackling abuse of the system

It cannot be denied that there are cases in which the system is abused to claim state benefits in Germany without entitlement. The German government is aware of this. Cases like this must be effectively prevented and legal action taken. Any abuse of entitlements or fraud will be rigorously addressed, but it is important to keep the debate objective and free of prejudices.

The Federal Government Commissioner for Integration Annette Widmann-Mauz stated, "Most foreign citizens who live in Germany work here and pay into the social insurance schemes. Naturally we must tackle abuse. That is why, for instance, citizens of EU member states are only entitled to receive Hartz IV unemployment benefit for a limited period once they have worked here for at least six months and have paid into the social insurance schemes for this period."

Plan to bring benefits into line with costs of living

Back in 2014 the German government adopted measures to address the fraudulent claiming of social welfare and family benefits, including child benefit.

Parents and children are now issued with a tax identification number to prevent child benefit being paid where there is no entitlement. With the help of this number, the relevant authority, the Familienkasse, can compare data to ensure that parents do not receive child benefit more than once for the same child. They also check more thoroughly and more rigorously than before that there is in fact an entitlement to payment of child benefit. Parents are called on to provide more evidence that the children for whom they are claiming benefits actually exist. Overall the German authorities now cooperate more effectively and significantly more successfully with the authorities responsible for child benefit in the home countries.

At European level, the German government has been working for years to have child benefit indexed to the costs of living in the country of residence of the child. The European Commission has, however, so far refused to present any proposal regarding the indexing of child benefit. It is still the goal of the German government to bring about a change to European law before the end of this legislative period.