European homelessness organisations are demanding that the UK scraps a pilot scheme to forcibly deport homeless people to their country of origin. Feantsa, the European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless, has also asked the European Union to set clearer rules to define whether EU citizens are an unreasonable burden on welfare systems and should be deported. In 2010, the UK Border Agency introduced a pilot scheme to deport eastern Europeans found sleeping out in parts of London, Oxford, Reading and Peterborough. The scheme allows the deportation of people who have been in the UK for longer than three months and have no prospect of working or studying. Feantsa said it ‘opposes arbitrary expulsions’ and added that EU directive 2004/38 says ‘an expulsion measure shall not be the automatic consequence of a Union citizen’s recourse to the social assistance system’. Read more on the FEANTSA website.
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