EN Official Journal of the European Union CE 88/587

(2004/C 88 E/0600)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-0113/03

by Mogens Camre (UEN) to the Commission

(28 January 2003)

Subject: Migrant workers from the new Member States

In connection with the forthcoming accession of ten new Member States to the EU, a number of European research institutes have tried to assess how many migrant workers the current EU countries can expect from the new Member States. The Commission has drawn up a summary of the most comprehensive studies in its information note of 6 March 2001 entitled ‘The Free Movement of Workers in the Context of Enlargement’. It concludes that the majority of migrant workers will be concentrated in mainly Germany and Austria.

These studies, however, are very incomplete, since they overlook the fact that a seven-year transitional arrangement will be in place for Germany and Austria. The earlier studies also fail to take account of the fact that the EC/EU has never before been enlarged to include so many less-prosperous countries. They generally point out that in the course of the 1980s the Community accepted Spain, Portugal and Greece as new members, and that these countries were not quite as well off as the other Member States. However, they ignore the fact that the then EC countries in practice introduced transitional regulations for the free movement of workers from the new Member States.

On 9 December 2002 the Danish weekly ‘Ugebrevet A4’ published a Gallup poll showing that some 150 000 Poles and 70 000 Estonians are planning to look for work in Denmark as soon as their countries join the EU. This was the first study published in Denmark which took account of the fact that Germany and Austria will be introducing 7-year transitional regulations on the free movement of workers. These figures diverge considerably from earlier studies which did not take account of the situation in Germany and Austria.

Will the Commission therefore provide an assessment of the consequences, in terms of the number of migrant workers from the new Member States, of the announcement by German and Austria that they intend to make use of the right to introduce 7-year transitional arrangements, so that workers from the 10 new Member States will not be able to seek work in these two countries for the first 7 years of their countries' membership? In its reply, can the Commission also assess whether the workers who would have sought employment in these two countries will look for it in other existing Member States instead?

Answer given by Mr Verheugen on behalf of the Commission

(28 February 2003)

The Commission has carefully studied all available scientific information regarding potential migration flows from candidate countries following accession and has also commissioned a study that has been carried out by a group of independent research Institutes. Furthermore the Commission prepared the information note referred to by the Honourable Member (‘The free movement of workers in the context of enlargement’). The purpose of this information note was to provide factual information as well as options for an orientation debate on this issue in the context of the Accession Negotiations. The note took fully into account the precedents of the accessions of Spain and Portugal. As a result of all information available the Commission concluded that migration flows can hardly be predicted with scientific methods and that comparable historical evidence was rare. While past experience shows that the removal of barriers to free movement in the case of accession of southern countries had only a moderate impact, the Commission explicitly took into account the large income difference between the present Member States and the Candidate Countries as well as the fact that the income differential is in the case of Eastern Enlargement larger than in any other enlargement round and that Germany and Austria seem to be the most affected. As a result the Commission advised the Council to follow a prudent, but flexible approach in the Enlargement Negotiations and presented a transitional arrangement for all central and Eastern candidate countries, which was accepted and which forms now part of the Accession Treaty. This transitional arrangement allows all current Member States to control and regulate the access of workers from the new Member States to their national labour markets under national rules for a maximum of seven years. As a result, no current Member State is put in a position where it is unable to fully respond to its own needs. The only provision which is specific to Germany and Austria indicates that these two countries have the right to apply national flanking measures to address serious disturbances or the threat thereof, in specific sensitive services sectors (such as construction or industrial cleaning) on their labour markets, which could arise in certain regions from cross-border provision of services involving the posting of workers.

For the moment the Commission has not received any official information from current Member States how they intend to apply the transitional arrangement after accession. However, a declaration to the Accession Treaty will state that current Member States shall endeavour to grant increased labour market access under national law, with a view to speeding up the approximation to the ‘acquis’ and even an encouragement to improve access before accession.

Since each Member State has the opportunity to choose to which extent it wishes to liberalise free movement of workers vis-à-vis new Member States the Commission is not yet in a position to assess the effects of the Member States' choices on other Member States' labour markets. Moreover, even if the migration policies of individual Member States during the transitional periods is known, comparable data on migration stocks and flows would not exist for all Member States or only for short periods of time, which seriously hinders the estimation of econometric models at the level of the EU-15. Finally the impact of enlargement itself cannot be estimated at this stage. Enlargement will strengthen further growth and employment opportunities in the future Member States and past experiences suggest that people either not migrate or may even return to their country of origin after the accession of their country to the Union.

The Commission does not consider opinion polls as a suitable instrument for a quantitative assessment of the migration potential. Answers are usually subjective and indicate intentions, not choices. This is one of the lessons of the German Socio-Economic-Panel (GSOEP), where every year the population in Eastern Germany is asked whether they intend to move to Western Germany. The results show that only around five per cent of those who announced their intention to move to Western Germany in the early 1990s did indeed move there five years later.