EU citizens can move and settle freely in the EU and claim social security benefits across borders – also after they retire. Once welcomed as wealthy migrants, they are now confronted with accusations of abusing benefits. Claudia Finotelli presents the case of Spain to explain how this change came about.

Interview by Kirsten Hoesch.

Retirement migration is not the first that comes to mind when we think of ‘migration’. From a German perspective, the image that immediately pops up is that of happy pensioners in Spanish vacation resorts, or so-called ‘retirement colonies’. What distinguishes this migration from others and why are you researching it?

Retirement migrants are indeed always seen as happy sun-seekers and have long been described as such in research. With this type of migration - unlike in other migration research - the relationship between migrants and the welfare state has long remained in the background. However, it is forgotten that retired migrants also make use of social benefits, and especially of health benefits as they get older.

They are difficult to explain compared to other migrant groups. Pensioners fall outside of traditional migrant groups such as those seeking humanitarian aid or family reunification. As non-workers, they also differ from economic migrants who seek labor opportunities and, therefore, also inclusion in the welfare state. For this reason, pensioners are not usually seen as a political problem. For a long time, they were seen as a privileged, welcome migrant group. This has certainly diminished interest in this group and increased my interest in them, because things are rarely as simple as they seem. I was interested in finding out how pensioners could turn into an unwelcome migrant group.

Was there research already available on retired migrants when you started researching them? What were established findings and how does your own research connect to them?

The literature has long dealt with this migrant group from the perspective of tourism and lifestyle. This group was examined from a single perspective only. Research studied who these migrants are, what they do, where and how they live, how they differ from other migrant groups. Less relevant were questions about their vulnerability, their dependence on social benefits, especially in the 'fourth' age, that is, in old age when one is more dependent on others. Only recently has interest increased on how retirees make use of welfare services in destination countries and with what consequences. There are some studies about their transnational migration and dependence on other migrants, for example in the household.

I am particularly interested in the relationship between the welfare state and retirees, not only how they use welfare, but also how they can impact the welfare state in destination countries.

In what form do retired migrants make use of welfare state benefits in Spain as an important destination country?

Pensioners make special use of healthcare. As they get older, they become more dependent on medical care and nursing. Older retired migrants are less able and less willing to return to their country of origin for treatment, for instance. They need doctors, nursing staff, and a practice nearby.

In Spain, two factors came together to trigger a peculiar dynamic: the Spanish public healthcare system, and the European Health Insurance Card. Spain’s public healthcare is basically open to anyone not privately insured. EU citizens can thus make use of healthcare services quite easily. Yet this use of the European Health Insurance Card was only intended for short stays and urgent cases, e.g. when traveling, not for permanent stays and ongoing needs for treatment. But this is exactly what happened in Spain: the card is used by EU migrants who live permanently in Spain, without being officially registered, and receiving their pension from their country of origin.

So these migrants have taken advantage of a combination of the possibilities offered by EU law and the specific opportunities of the Spanish welfare state?

Precisely. The situation in Spain worsened in 2012. EU citizens, especially from the UK, were increasingly moving to Spain without registering. Their need of medical care also increased the burden on the public system. At that time, the Spanish Court of Auditors reported that there was a continuous abuse of the European Health Insurance Card by older, mainly British migrants, because they always sought treatment in Spain despite not being registered. They lived in Spain de facto, but not de jure. In this context, the Court of Auditors reported an imbalance between the excessive healthcare expenditure for EU patients and the lack of reimbursement from their countries of origin.

What impact did this report have in the public debate and in politics?

The media response was very strong. Countless negative articles were published about retired EU migrants and their increased burden on the healthcare system. Spain was ironically described as an unparalleled surgical paradise for European retirees - and as Europe's retirement home.

The shift from welcome to unwelcome migrants is very interesting. The phenomenon is actually familiar regarding other migrant groups, for example under the keywords ‘pull factors’, welfare magnet, welfare chauvinism or deservingness. There was already a public debate about whether migrants are attracted by social benefits and whether they are entitled to these benefits at all. But this discourse, which historically concerned other groups, was now expanded to the previously welcome retired migrants.

The Spanish government responded by passing a law through parliament that, for the first time, defined the procedure for proving the insurance requirements for non-working EU citizens, as well as the associated rights and obligations. With the amendment, a social security card would then only be issued to EU pensioners who were officially registered as residents of Spain and under a Foreigner’s register. 

Did this policy create measurable change?

The impact of this legislation is not clearly measurable because published information from public authorities report on all EU citizens, not just pensioners.

The procedure has definitely become much, much more bureaucratic. The important thing here, however, is that a standard was created - even if not as such - primarily with the 300,000 or so British citizens living in Spain in mind, because they were the ones who used the healthcare system the most. However, the law no longer affects them - because Brexit means they are no longer EU citizens and have to register differently anyway.

But of course the law has had an impact in another respect, regardless of the actual use of healthcare services: It abruptly ended the negative public debate and negative press.

British retirement migrants in Spain are an important group. What other retirement migrant groups are there?

If you now look at other destination countries for retirement migration, the issue is developing quite differently. Spain, for example, cannot be compared with Italy as a destination country for retirement migration. There was no such debate in Italy. But there is a very interesting reverse situation there: many Italians have moved to Portugal with their pensions, which are very heavily taxed in Italy, because Portugal allowed European pensioners to settle there for a long time without taxing their pensions. This caused a huge debate in Italy because the president of the Italian Social Security Institute at the time considered it ‘absolutely unacceptable’ that Italian pensioners were cheating the Italian state by moving to Portugal with all their money. In this case, it was not the debate about the social benefits that EU pensioners could claim in Italy, but a capital flight, the pension flight of Italian pensioners to Portugal.

This seems to be a combination, an interaction in the triangle of EU legal framework conditions, specific national welfare state features and individual strategies. It’s a very interesting phenomenon that bares open the clear financial interests behind this lifestyle migration and the opportunities offered by these various interwoven legal areas.

It’s truly fascinating. Portugal has now responded with a change in the law. Since the beginning of 2025, it’s no longer possible to settle there without taxation. Sweden is also trying to stop the migration of Swedish pensioners to Portugal.

What we generally see, however, are attempts to regulate more strictly at the national level. You could put it this way: within this area of freedom of movement, the EU states are somehow trying - as Maurizio Ferrera described it - to introduce a minimum degree of state autonomy. There is this tension between, on the one hand, freedom of movement and the possibility of settling anywhere after three months if you have sufficient resources and, on the other hand, the fact that EU countries are trying to reintroduce some autonomy through national legislation to avoid certain spill-over effects.

What questions would you like to pursue further in your research on this topic? And which international comparative perspectives might be informative?

I would certainly scrutinize the links between welfare systems in origin and destination countries in greater depth. And it would be very interesting to compare the same group of migrants in two or three European countries in order to investigate how this interaction between the healthcare system in the country of origin and the country of destination plays out - for example, Germans who have settled in Italy, Spain or Portugal.

I would also compare between different migrant groups to test certain contextual variables. One context variable is trust. For example, British people have always tended to seek treatment in Spain, whereas German pensioners generally try to seek treatment in Germany. This shows how the use of social and health services depends on additional factors that must be measured at the individual level: trust (in the healthcare system), but also language skills. For British migrants, for instance, long waiting lists in the UK, particularly for orthopedic or heart surgery, also play a role.

We must also broaden our perspective on this issue. The question is not only how pensioners use public services, but also what they can do for the welfare system in destination countries, how their presence, their behavior affects the destination welfare state. A curious example is the introduction of hospice culture in Spain thanks to British retirees. End-of-life care or palliative care usually took place at home or in the hospital. But the British retirees introduced the hospice culture, set up their own hospices, and in some cases managed to integrate them into the Spanish healthcare system. There is a hospice near Malaga whose patients are now 80 percent Spanish.

Yet there has been little research to date on this aspect. It’s key to continue asking: how does the presence of retired migrants change the welfare culture, the health service culture, and the care culture of the destination country?

This interview was originally published in German at sozialpolitikblog: 'Ruhestandsmigration: Pensioners welcome?'

Header photo by  Johan Mouchet - Unsplash