German interior ministers are proposing changes to social benefits for EU foreigners. This outline of measures comes from draft resolutions intended for the upcoming Interior Ministers Conference (IMK), according to the newspaper “Bild”. The proposals focus on improving anti-fraud measures through enhanced digital data exchange and the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI), which would automatically detect fraud schemes and accelerate the identification of perpetrators.
Specifically, the ministers plan to examine whether the entitlement of EU citizens to “Bürgergeld” (Citizen’s Income) can be made more difficult. The goal is to prevent people, particularly those from Southeast Europe, from qualifying for Bürgergeld after only a few months of employment in Germany. Furthermore, they intend to look into reducing children’s benefits for EU residents whose children reside in their home countries, who currently receive the same amount of child benefit as they would in Germany.
The draft proposal cites the premise that “social benefit fraud or misuse threatens the public acceptance of social benefits, undermines the integrity and functionality of state support mechanisms, and represents a considerable strain on social systems and the federal budget nationwide.” Consequently, the intended purpose of these measures is to make the welfare state “less susceptible to fraud.”
