New Citizens, Old Borders

• Author: Tito Boeri
• Position: Professor of Economics at Bocconi University in Milan, Director of Fondazione Rodolfo Debenedetti, and fellow of the Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research
• Pages: 36-37

Why Europe has not put out the welcome mat for its new members

Page 36

The European Union (EU) welcomed the citizens of the 10 new member countries (NMCs) by shutting the door in their faces. Actually, it did worse than that. Because there is no agreement at the EU level on common rules to be applied to the new citizens during the seven-year transition period, each of the old members decided to establish its own without coordinating with the others. In general, these rules substantially tighten migration or other restrictions that affect the newcomers.

Austria and Germany, the destinations of four out of five migrants from Eastern Europe, announced in 2002 that they would restrict migration from the NMCs for the full seven years. France and Belgium decided to maintain current restrictions on immigration for new EU citizens for at least the first two years. The Danish government met fierce resistance when the Ministry of Labor proposed opening Denmark's borders to all new citizens who could prove they had a job. Greece and Italy opted to treat NMC citizens as if they were migrants from countries outside the EU. Finland, initially intending to take a liberal stance, postponed the opening of its borders for at least two years. A Swedish government draft bill in the same vein was not approved by the parliament, but Sweden also has plans to limit access. If that happens, all countries bordering the NMCs will have restricted migration by workers from the "New Europe" (see map).

This tightening of restrictions is a reaction to the mounting concerns of the public in the established EU members (the EU-15) about migration issues. The new members are small economically-they have significantly lower incomes per capita than the EU-15-but large demographically: the two phases of eastern enlargement (the CEE-8, plus the planned admission of Bulgaria and Romania) involve more than 100 million people. More than fearing large waves of migrants from the NMCs, citizens of the EU-15 are concerned that workers from the new members will sponge off their welfare states. According to a 2002 survey by Eurobarometer, the polling organization of the European Commission, one in two EU citizens believes that migrants, wherever they come from, are already abusing the welfare state, and two out of three consider that the EU should open up only to countries whose living standards are comparable. Not surprisingly...