only 17/448 (~4%) million EU citizens work in other country than their birth one. expatriating is not as common as you'd think living in a major EU city.

13M work, 17.9M live. [0]

However, ~1M goes back every year, so the affected people are more than the ones _currently_ living abroad.

Moreover, there are services that also intra-EU tourists can benefit from: - buying products >18 y.o. at automatic machines - simplifying buying drugs at pharmacies (we have EHIC, but it doesn't cover not-urgent care) - having fast track at airports without having an EU passport (in many countries people have an ID but not a passport) - easier lookup for police during random checks

[0]: https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=738&langId=en&pub...

Did you really just use the word "only" in relation to 17 million people? Are issues 17 million persons somehow beneath your notice just because they're a smaller part of some arbitrary selected whole?

If you reduce that fraction it's close to 1/25. I know more than 25 people, and indeed I know several EU citizens who work in a different EU country.

4% of the population is a massive amount of people