CITIZENS of ten Eastern and Southern European countries will be entitled to UK social security benefits, council housing, treatment on the NHS and schooling when their countries join the European Union next year.

The Government is passing legislation to allow 73 million people the right to live and work in the UK from May 1, 2004. Every other major European country, including Germany, France and Italy, will bar Eastern Europeans from working for up to seven years.

Denis MacShane, the Minister for Europe, who is responsible for the legislation, confirmed that new EU citizens would be entitled to the same benefits as British citizens.

“Benefits to citizens of the new member states will be considered on the same basis as those citizens from current EU member states,” he said. “EU nationals are entitled to UK social security benefits on the same basis as UK nationals.”

The new members are Poland, Hungary, Lativia, Lithuania, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Cyprus and Malta. Average incomes there can be as little as one sixth those of Britain, with unemployment up to 19 per cent. Social security and medical services are often rudimentary.

Oliver Letwin, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: “The Government should have ensured, as we would have done, that people from newly acceding countries gained these rights only once their economies had reached a level more comparable to our own.”

A Foreign Office spokesman said that all EU citizens have to pass an “habitual residency” test before they can claim benefits: “The residency test makes benefit tourism for non-workers very difficult. There is no evidence there will be a large influx of people.”

However, Maria Zealey, of the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, said that EU citizens could get benefits almost as soon as they arrive,as long as they made arrangements showing that they intended to stay in Britain.

“If you have got accommodation, registered with your GP, put your children in school — if significant arrangements have been made, it is entirely possible you would be entitled to benefits from day one,” she said.

As well as social security benefits, any Eastern European citizens who move to Britain will also have a right to full NHS treatment, free education for their children and to apply for council housing. A spokeswoman for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, which is responsible for council housing, said: “They will be eligible to apply if they are habitually resident.”

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