EU enlargement

1
EU enlargement labour migrationThe UK
experience so far

• Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah
• Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr)
• www.ippr.org
• d.sriskandarajah_at_ippr.org

2
Floodgates or turnstiles?

• The potential scale and impact of migration was
  one of the most heated aspects of EU enlargement
• An unhappy coincidence? The politics and
  economics of EU met the politics and economics of
  migration
• Result media frenzy that fed into wider fears
  about migration, benefit tourism, failing
  government policies, Roma etc.
• Six months on, lets untangle issues, examine
  evidence, and assess whether policies were good.

3
Main concerns for EU15

• Large scale of the enlargement (10 new members
  and 75 million people)
• Large economic disparities between existing and
  new members
• Large and uncontrolled flows of unskilled or
  low-skilled workers that will undercut wages in
  EU15 countries.
• Predicted stock 3-4 million in EU15 200,000 in
  UK
• Predicted annual flows 370,000 to EU15 17,000
  to UK

4
Transitional restrictions

• Concerns about impact of migration on some EU15
  countries led to transitional restrictions being
  permitted as part of the Accession treaties.
• These restrictions
• can only be imposed up to 2011 at the latest
• can only be applied to workers and services and
  not other flows (e.g. visitors, students)
• Countries like Germany Austria indicated early
  on that they would impose restrictions but other
  EU15 countries imposed restrictions at the last
  minute.

5
UK pragmatism

• UK decided to allow migrant workers access
  because
• unemployment is low at the moment
• there are skills shortages that accession
  nationals can fill
• more legal flows will reduce demand for illegal
  workers
• the UK stands to gain an early starter advantage.
• Worker Registration Scheme

6
6 months on

• 91,000 applicants between May September
• 56 Polish 17 Lithuanian 10 Slovak
• 53 male 47 female
• Falling applications from 20k to 10k a month
• Around half arrived before 1 May
• Mostly young 45 18-24 39 25-34
• 16 factory workers 7 kitchen 7 waiters 5
  packer 5 cleaning 5 farm hands
• Low wage 80 earning 4.50-5.99 per hour
• Dispersed 25 London 15 Anglia Southeast
• Very few benefits claims

7
A new approach?

• Good example of using migration to pursue
  economic and political priorities
• Achieved political compromise domestically
• Assured public
• Helped relationships with accession states
• Tackled illegal working
• Promoted economic efficiency
• Good source of data
• But influence of media and public concern still
  strong

8
Key questions

• Did the UK have exceptional conditions?
• When will other EU15 states relax restrictions?
• What is the balance between controlled and
  uncontrolled migration?
• What will happen to other flows of migrants?
• Implications for future EU enlargement?
• How much of migration management is about
  managing public opinion?