» News
- » "Who's still afraid of EU e...

"Who's still afraid of EU enlargement?" - summary of the ECAS report on the free movement of workers in EU25

19/09/2006

The present report is an update of the research ECAS carried out and presented to the European Parliament last year on how the free movement of workers was being conditioned by the application of Transitional Arrangements implying restrictions as regards access to given labour markets. Two years on, some major conclusions on the dynamics of post-enlargement migratory flows can be drawn.

On the European level, economic migration remains low with EU-10 nationals making up only 0.2% of the total EU-15 population, but some countries have seen a more important influx of workers from the new Member States. Nevertheless this is not a phenomenon that only affects those countries, which apply fully community rules on free movement of workers. Being one of the first Member States to grant free access to its labour market, the United Kingdom received 447,000 applications. However the migration pattern remained fairly similar over the past two years with only a slight increase in the number of quarterly applications. Ireland also experienced a significant number of migrant workers from the CEECs: out of 198,000 Personal Public Service numbers allocated, around two-thirds are known to have actually taken up employment in Ireland. On the other hand, Germany, continuing to require a work permit from nationals of the eight new Member States, at the end of 2005 also hosted 490,000 migrant EU-10 nationals (amounting to 0.6% of the total population), while a more significant intra-European migration still originated from one of the "old" Member States, namely Italy (around 540,800). At the same time Sweden, the only country to grant equal access to both its labour market and its social welfare system received only a marginal number of workers from the new Member States (8,768).

The choice of migrant workers is of a very complex nature and cannot solely be explained by the openness of the labour market.

Another trend shown by the first two years of membership is regional (or "short distance") mobility, which includes commuting (or cross borders) and mobility in a broader geographical area. This latter is particularly tangible between Slovakia - the Czech Republic and Slovakia - Hungary with more than 75,000 and 21,000 Slovakians working in these countries respectively. Estonians also target a geographically closer destination i.e. Finland, where they amount to 80% of all accession States nationals.

- The report shows that no direct link can be drawn between the migratory flows and the application of the Transitional Arrangements, since traditional destinations continue to impact on migrants' choices. In addition to that, third countries remain the major source of immigration in EU25.

- The additional workforce was absorbed by receiving economies. Take the example of Ireland where the employment rate of accession States nationals is higher (85%) than that of Irish (67%); while unemployment rates continue to be very low (4.2% - 1 st quarter 2006).

- A large part of migrants are engaged in seasonal or short-term employments (e.g. in Austria, where out of 14,693 Hungarians only 3,250 were granted permanent work permits). This was also highlighted in the Report of the European Commission on the Functioning of the Transitional Arrangements in relation to Germany and the Netherlands for example. - Migrant workers help to fill skills bottlenecks (in 2006 in Ireland, only 1% of manufacturing companies report labour shortages, whereas this share was still 10% in 2000) and are mainly complementary and not competitive to local labour force. Furthermore, labour migrants are far from being benefit tourists: for example in the United Kingdom, only 768 demands for social benefits and 527 applications for child benefits were allowed for further processing.

- The research did not provide evidence of the alleged circumvention of the Transitional Arrangements by new Member State nationals becoming self-employed (not conditioned by the Transitional Arrangements) instead of complying with national administrative burdens and taking up salaried jobs. For example in Belgium in 2004/2005, only 1,300 selfemployed from the new Member States were present.

Two years after the entry into force of the Transitional Arrangements, many Member States decided to switch to the full application of community rules on free movement of workers. The three "pioneers"(Ireland, Sweden, the United Kingdom) were followed by Finland, Greece, Portugal, Spain and later by Italy, whilst a further five countries (Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, France and the Netherlands) took measures to gradually lift restrictions or to ease procedures. Only Austria and Germany remain the countries with firm intentions to maintain actual restrictions in place until the end of the transitional period, i.e. 2011 at the latest.
However, these two countries could follow the practice of other Member States operating a sectorbased liberalization of their labour markets granting easier access to those occupations where there is a need for immediate additional workforce. The important differences in the shares of seasonal and permanent employment should also be taken into account; while current restrictions should not create a model to be automatically followed when deciding about the approach towards free movement of Romanian and Bulgarian workforce.

Therefore ECAS recommends that instead of maintaining restrictive labour migration regimes, better monitoring systems should be put in place. This would allow policy makers to justify their choices vis-a_-vis both national and European public opinion. Liberalizing free movement of workers (this is the case now in 8 Member States and revisions are on the way in further 5 countries) is an indispensable step to make European Citizenship a meaningful European achievement. At the same time, the principle of equal treatment and equal conditions of work should be enforced throughout better and more effective labour inspections and syndic activity. Finally, circular migration (to which we already have examples in new Member States with wellperforming economies e.g. in Lithuania where return migration increased by 34% in 2005) through investments in infrastructure, job-creation, etc. should be encouraged in order for the sending countries to benefit from the experience and skills of migrants acquired abroad.

Note: after introducing the European context of geographical mobility, the incentives or the obstacles to free movement in the EU and the system of Transitional Arrangements, the report provides a country by country analysis of post-enlargement migratory flows. The figures in the report come from official sources

Created by: inga, modyfied: Tue Sep 19 16:13:38 2006

Print Up +

Site Map