Hundreds of EU students hit with SU repayment claims

Many student grant recipients no longer meet requirements

Jan 14, 2015

Hundreds of students from other EU countries studying in Denmark are being asked to repay funds paid to them as the state-allocated studying allowance SU, Information reports.

A controversial European Court of Justice decision in 2013 extended the SU entitlement to students from other EU member states. Students could qualify if they came to Denmark to study and at the same time became employed in the country.

In order to qualify, students need to work about 10-12 hours a week. The agency for higher education, Styrelsen for Videregående Uddannelser, checks to make sure that recipients of the grant still live up to the criteria, and it is the result of such checks that the repayment claims are being made.

Between May and November last year, 389 repayment claims were made by the agency. This is in addition to 517 earlier cases of students either having their SU stopped or being asked to repay it as a result of checks.

Peter Nielsen, the head of the agency’s SU, expressed regret at the number of cases. “It’s a lot. We think it’s a shame that we’ve had to make so many repayment claims,” he said.

“We would of course have preferred that EU citizens had understood the rules.”