The Impact of EU Enlargement on Social Policies: Germany and Switzerland as ‘Welfare Magnets’?

In 2011, the period during which European member states could implement restrictive rules to the free movement principle after the EU enlargement finished. Since then, people coming from the CEECs can live and work in any European country without restrictions, which also means that they can access national welfare benefits under the principle of equal treatment. In the years of the pre-accession, this led to an emergence of a large debate about the need (or not) to adapt national social policies vis-à-vis the challenges posed by EU migration. Although many studies showed that the impact of the EU enlargement on welfare states was going to be residual and positive (Gilpin et al 2006; Boeri and Brücker 2001; Fertig and Schmidt, 2001), in many member states the fear of becoming ‘welfare magnets’ prompted policy advisers to recommend regressive reforms to protect nationals. However, the outcome of those debates is inconclusive in relation to policy results. Eight years after the transitional period, we know very little about the real impact of EU enlargement on welfare states. Have European countries transformed their social policies due to EU migration? Has the EU enlargement led to more regressive welfare benefits for all? Or have they implemented policies to limit the access to welfare benefits to non-nationals only? This paper addresses these questions by offering an in-depth analysis of welfare transformation in two countries, Germany and Switzerland, from 2014 to 2018. The objective of the paper is to identify those cases in which social policy reforms were prompted by EU migration after the EU enlargement. Both cases are relevant and can offer us different insights on the impact of EU migration on social policies for various reasons. Whereas Germany is a EU member state and has developed a continental welfare state model, Switzerland is not a EU member state and the Swiss welfare state is considered liberal. These differences will allow us to analyse the extent to which the type of welfare institutions and EU membership influence the content and the direction of the welfare reform in light of EU migration challenges.