European Citizen Action Service (ECAS) has extended its phone and email hotline for questions on free mobility rights for workers in the European Union. Experts can answer queries in many languages.

The ECAS hotline is hot and continues to operate!
ECAS Hotline

On the 1st August 2006, ECAS launched its ‘Free Movement Rights’ Hotline. Ever since, ECAS staff and legal experts have been responding to numerous questions and have been offering free and impartial advice on free movement rights. Apart from this direct service to European citizens, ECAS also gathered a considerable bulk of evidence on post-enlargement labour mobility in the EU by means of a specially developed questionnaire.

ECAS hotline has two goals: solving the problems encountered by migrants and gathering the evidence of their experiences, thus providing valuable contribution to the seminars and debates organized by ECAS and its partners in the framework of the project as well as to the final conclusions to be drawn at the end of the European Year of Workers’ Mobility.

Initially, the hotline has been foreseen to operate only for 2 months, but considering its popularity and the important evidence that it provides, ECAS decided to continue its operation.

Therefore, our experts remain available for you to contact. They are able to answer the calls in several languages: English, French, German, Lithuanian Polish and Italian.

The number and the e-mail address do not change:

+32 (0) 2512 5968

e-mail: hotline@ecas.org

The hotline’s operation and replies to the questionnaire are showing that there is, a considerable demand for advice on free movement rights as many migrants are under-informed, misinformed or just confused by complicated procedures on their arrival to the country of destination. As a result, they can find themselves in a very vulnerable situation and often prone to abuse.

There is also a tangible outcome of gathering the experience by hotline. In 2005 the cases that were answered by our experts were compiled into a report by Julianna Traser – “Who's afraid of EU enlargement?” This year, the same author updated her report, which identifies what has actually changed for citizens’ mobility in the past year. This new report “Who’s still afraid of EU enlargement?” was presented and discussed in the European Parliament (see the section Seminar in the European Parliament). Later this year this report will be complemented by an additional survey which will contain the evidence gathered by hotline.

The idea behind the ECAS hotline is to protect citizens’ rights. This is best achieved by spreading information. The hotline team wants to reach out to as many citizens as possible and for as long as possible. Help us to help you defend your free movement rights as a European citizen. We are looking forward to your phone-calls and e-mails with queries, as well as to your evidence of your experience which you can share with us by filling the questionnaire.

Call us now on +32 (0) 2512 5968 or e mail our experts on hotline@ecas.org.