Child benefit payments to foreigners, including citizens of other European Union Member States, are an emotional matter.
With the gradual expansion of freedom of movement for workers from Eastern European countries, the topic has gained additional explosive power, especially since the AfD keeps trying to create atmosphere with the scenario of mass immigration into the social systems.
Every case of gang-style child support fraud offered her a welcome opportunity to do so.
This is a delicate matter for the political parties of the centre.
Organized social abuse takes place.
The investigators in North Rhine-Westphalia in particular are suffering.
Gangs that got hold of them had transported families from south-eastern Europe to Germany on a large scale in order to operate lucrative criminal business models with social and family benefits.
Against this background, the statutory exclusion clause for the receipt of child benefit, which the European Court of Justice has now criticized as not conforming to EU law, must be seen.
The previous black-red government wanted to put a stop to "unintended incentive effects" for immigration from abroad.
EU foreigners who have no income in Germany did not receive child benefit for the first three months.
For Germans who had been abroad, on the other hand, everything remained the same;
they were not affected by the cuts.
It is not surprising that the ECJ would not accept such unequal treatment.
Through the EU principle of equal treatment, the Court of Justice has had a strong influence on national tax and social policy for a long time, although both areas are not communitized.
In this particular case, there was also no lack of warnings.
In the legislative process, numerous associations warned that the three-month exclusion clause would fail before the European Court of Justice.
Now the current federal government has received the receipt from Luxembourg.
One more building block that the traffic light coalition has to roll over in the planned basic child security system.