Mr Collins was an Irish national who moved to the UK, claimed job-seekers’ allowance and had his claim rejected. The European Court of Justice found that the rights of job-seekers should be interpreted in the light of the more general right to equal treatment of citizens. The ECJ decided that citizens of the Union could rely on the Treaty to have access to ‘Benefits of a financial nature intended to facilitate access to employment in the labour market of a Member State’. Therefore, the Court ruled that although it was a legitimate and perfectly legal act for a Member State to require that a job-seeker has genuine link to the employment market in the Member State in which he claims job-seeking allowance, it was not permissible under Union law for a residence condition to apply in a disproportionate and discriminatory way. Hence the UK had to justify on objective grounds the refusal to grant Mr Collins job-seekers’ allowance and show that the grounds were proportionate and legitimate and not merely on the grounds of national discrimination.
Read full case here.
