(Reuters) – Altering the European Union’s principal of free movement of labour in the wake of Britain’s vote to leave the bloc could start a problematic domino effect, Austrian Finance Minister Hans Joerg Schelling said on Thursday.
“You cannot have privileges without obligations,” Schelling told Reuters on the sidelines of an investment conference in London. “Doing so could start a domino effect,” he added referring especially to access to the EU’s ‘common market’ trade arrangement.
EU officials have said repeatedly in the wake of June’s Brexit vote that the ‘four freedoms’ — free movement of workers along with movement of capital, goods and services — must be maintained by any country that wants access to its common market.