EUROPEAN REVIEW

ISSUE 34 - Page 4

TWO REPORTS FROM EU SOURCES have recently highlighted the contribution that migrant workers make to their host country’s economy. It’s now been two years since eight new Member States from eastern Europe plus Malta and Cyprus joined the club. Only Sweden, Ireland and the UK opened their borders to workers from the East at that time. The other twelve ‘old’ members now have to show the EU Commission good reasons why they should continue restrictions on the movement of labour. To help them make up their minds the Commission has published a Communication which compares the effect on national  economies of the ‘closed’ and ‘open’ approaches.

Migrants from other EU countries as % of working age population in ‘old EU’ (EU10 = new Member States).           [NO FIGURES FOR ITALY]

It begins by stressing ‘Free movement of persons is one  of the most fundamental freedoms guaranteed by Community law. It includes the right for EU nationals to move to another EU Member State to take up employment and to establish themselves in the host State with their family members’. The ‘transitional arrangements’, that allowed the old Member States to keep the barriers up, can only apply to employment, cannot be less favourable than those that apply to workers from outside the EU and, in any case, must end by 2011. The document goes on to make clear that migrating numbers have been small with less than one per cent of the working age population coming from the new EU 10 except in Ireland and Austria. Nonetheless the economic performance of the ‘open’ countries has been enhanced by EU 10 migrants who alleviate skills bottlenecks and have a generally higher level of education and employment than non-EU

and, in some cases, home-country  workers.  Furthermore the legalisation of the position of migrants has led to many previously illegal workers coming out of the underground economy and paying taxes etc. The increase in applications for seasonal work permits, and by those claiming to be self-employed, to the ‘closed’ Member States show that the opposite may be occurring there. Meanwhile another report has been examining the whole subject of  migration within the EU, both to find a job and for other reasons. Perhaps surprisingly work was given as their reason for switching countries by only 25.2% of those surveyed with ‘family and love’ winning

Reasons for migration within the EU (%)

out  with  29.7%. Here there is a marked gender difference with more than 4 out of 10 women giving this response while more men chose work. Breaking migrant groups down by nationality shows the traditional flow of manual workers from southern Europe to Germany, large numbers of British and German retirees going to Spain and more highly educated and younger Spaniards seeking their fortune in Germany and the UK. This is also the group most likely to suffer from homesickness, according to the report, while the British and Germans form circles of people from their own countries and French movers are most likely to have host-country friends.