EU court rules against migrant "benefit tourism" EU citizens who enter another country "solely" to claim benefits can be excluded from welfare schemes, according to a court judgment that will be welcomed by national governments trying to stave off the rise of anti-immigrant parties across Europe. The European Court of Justice declared on Tuesday that EU member states must have "the possibility of refusing" social benefits to "economically inactive" EU citizens who moved to the country to claim welfare. Germany and the UK have both looked at introducing populist clampdowns on so-called "benefit tourism." While free movement of people is ingrained in EU treaties, limiting access to benefits is one of the tools that policy makers can use to try to deter people from entering a country. The case stems from claims filed by a Romanian woman who gave birth during her stay in Leipzig in eastern Germany. She received child benefits worth €317 per month but was refused unemployment support when the authorities decided that she was not actively seeking a job. The 25-year old has no professional qualifications, little education and does not speak German. The ECJ declared that the Romanian woman and her son "cannot claim a right of residence in Germany" as they do not have sufficient resources to support themselves. The rise of so-called "benefit tourism" within the EU has been highlighted by leaders such as British prime minister David Cameron. But member states have so far come forward with little evidence of its widespread existence. Earlier this year, the former European commissioner for employment Laszlo Andor accused Mr Cameron of peddling "myths" on the topic. The judgment on Tuesday will come as a relief to German officials, who generally expected the European court to uphold earlier German rulings. The ECJ advocate-general offered an opinion earlier this year that countries could reject benefit claims by citizens of other EU countries if the applicants were not seriously looking for work. The ruling will allow the German government to press on with planned laws to clamp down on welfare abuse. While there is no direct legal link between the judgment and these proposals, an adverse ruling would have made it more difficult politically to pursue measures without a time-consuming review of the ECJ judgment. Although free movement of people within the EU is guaranteed by the organisation's treaties, rules on who can claim benefits are less clear. Some countries, such as Belgium, have sent letters to out-of-work EU migrants demanding that they leave the country as they had become "an unreasonable burden" - a move that is within EU rules. But other governments, such as the UK, have complained that EU laws leave little room to limit access to benefits for migrants from elsewhere in the bloc. A surge in support for the anti-immigration UK Independence Party has prompted the British government to explore ways of restricting migrants" access to benefits. A spokesman for Mr Cameron said on Tuesday that the British government would examine the case in detail. "One of the things that it underlines has been that freedom of movement is not an unqualified right," the spokesman said. We will look very carefully at what we and other governments can do in response to this judgment. Mr Cameron has assured the British public that he is seeking more radical renegotiation of the freedom of movement rules. Last week, a study by UK academics found that EU migrants had paid much more in taxes than they had received in benefits over the past decade. Overall, migrants from the bloc have contributed a net fiscal gain of £20bn to the British economy in the 10 years to 2011, the academics calculated.