European law

REGULAR readers of this space will know that I am not a great fan of the European Union and I don´t think I am alone. One of the key statutes of the EUis the free movement of labour. In otherwords EU citizens should be able to move across member countries with ease. But not in Spain! The Spanish government has recently started a crackdown on so-called health tourism. In other-words they are objecting to people who are non-Spanish using their hospitals. Now surely any EU resident should be able to use Spanish National Health hospitals? I believe that Spanish citizens are able to use British hospitals so it shouldn´t be one law for some and another for others. Spanish citizens living in Britain are not required to have any sort of residence certificate but British citizens in Spain must have the infamous green “residence” certificate. Now, the Spanish tax authorities want all people who live in Spain to give a full breakdown of their total wealth which also involves bank accounts in other countries. Surely this breaks European Union legislation. It is often said in Britain that the only country which actually takes European Union law seriously is the United Kingdom. I do not know if this is true but Spain is introducing legislation which in some ways penalises non-Spanish European Union residents. The health service should be open to all, I know it is costly, but surely it forms part of the European dream. We should all be equal.