Laszlo Andor, the EU employment commissioner, said the prime minister's efforts to outlaw so-called benefit tourism were the product of hysteria, and an "unfortunate overreaction".
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he also suggested Cameron was misleading the public about the potential scale of immigration from Bulgaria and Romania when current controls on migration from those countries are lifted on January 1.
"The unilateral rhetoric is not really helpful, because it risks presenting the UK as a nasty country in the European Union. We don't want that," he said.
Cameron's official spokesman said the government would press on regardless of any objections or legal action from the EU.
"This is what we're going to do," he said, adding: "We're not the only country to see free movement as a qualified right."
Under the prime minister's proposals, there would be a ban on new arrivals claiming housing benefit and a three-month wait before they could claim jobseeker's allowance.
The move would require some secondary legislation; higher fines for employers paying less than the minimum wage would require new primary legislation.
The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, was granted an urgent question on the issue in the Commons at 12.30pm on Wednesday.
In an article for the Financial Times, Cameron said he shared the deep concerns of many people in Britain at the EU's requirement to lift transitional controls on Romanians and Bulgarians in January, and blamed "monumental" mishandling of the issue by the previous Labour government.
However, Andor warned against undermining the EU's guiding principle of freedom of movement.
It would be a slippery slope if EU member states started objecting to things they had signed up to in Brussels, he added.
"This is an unfortunate overreaction," he said. "We have been in dialogue with the British authorities and government officials in recent years, and we always encouraged a fact-based debate about the movement of workers and the implications.
"We're not speaking about immigration here. We're talking about the free movement of workers, which applies to every EU member state; for new member states it only applies after a conditional period. These rules have been developed by these member states themselves together, including the UK. And it's part of the single market, which the UK appreciates so much in the EU."
Andor also claimed the British public had "not been given all of the truth and the full truth about the subject" by Cameron.
"For example, in the article by the prime minister, there is a link between the EU enlargement and the number of migrants … [but] about two-thirds of the migrants go to the United Kingdom from non-European countries. And also if you look at the current movement, there's much more people moving from, for example, Italy and Spain as opposed to Romania and Bulgaria.
"There are also existing EU rules and safeguards against the so-called benefit tourism. If we look at jobseeker's allowance: if someone newly arrived in the UK or in another country, it is the home country which in the first place needs to cover its necessary jobseeker's allowance and not the receiving country. So they would need a more accurate presentation of the reality not under such pressure [and] not under such hysteria, which sometimes happens in the UK."
The lifting in January of transitional controls on Bulgarians and Romanians entering the UK has prompted anxiety about the numbers likely to come and opinion polls showing that most Britons want migrants from the two countries barred from working.
In the package, Cameron announced:
• No newly arrived EU jobseekers will be able to claim housing benefit.
• No EU migrant will be entitled to out-of-work benefits for the first three months. In line with a previous announcement, from January no EU migrant will be able to claim jobseeker's allowance (JSA) for more than a maximum of six months unless they can prove that they have a genuine prospect of employment.
• A new minimum-earnings threshold will be introduced before benefits such as income support can be claimed.
• Any EU national sleeping rough or begging will be deported and barred from re-entry for 12 months "unless they can prove they have a proper reason to be here, such as a job".
Asked why the proposals had been rushed out just weeks before January 1, Downing Street said the plans had been under consideration for some time. He said the six-month limit on claiming benefits without a genuine prospect of employment and 12-month bar on re-entry of deported migrants would be in place before the restrictions on Bulgarian and Romanian citizens were lifted.
The Liberal Democrats have agreed to the measures, saying they are reasonable and proportionate.
However, Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, said voters would not believe the measures were tough enough.
"Every time he shoots our fox, we're up in the opinion polls, and that's because people just don't believe this guy," he said. "This is the man who throughout his whole leadership of the Conservative party has said that free movement of people is an essential part of the single market; he has been the biggest cheerleader in Brussels for the EU expanding, to take in not just Turkey but the Ukraine.
"It doesn't sound very tough to me, because under his proposals somebody could come here on 1 January from Romania and within 12 weeks be entitled to unemployment benefit. I think that's outrageous, I wouldn't call that tough. I would still say that we're being far too generous, even if he does have the guts to put this in place."
Source: theguardian.com
Author: Rowena Mason and Patrick Wintour
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