[danielf]

Originally Posted by martyh

I didn't think that CB was reliant NI contributions so it shouldn't be that, other than that i have no idea why we have to pay CB to other countries children ,there must be some obscure piece of EU legislation that says we must and presumably that same rule applies to all members ,it's just that other members may choose to ignore it for the idiocy it is .

Question ,are we the only EU country that has CB ?

I do think it's something to do with the compulsory nature of NI. And we're not the only country to have CB. In fact we're not the only country to pay CB on non-resident children: Germany, The Netherlands, Latvia and Czech Republic do so as well.

Last week, a HMRC spokeswoman said EU rules allow EEA nationals to claim child benefit if they meet the relevant conditions and pay compulsory national insurance contributions.

The UK, Czech Republic, Germany, Latvia and the Netherlands allow child benefit to be paid for children who live elsewhere in the EU.