Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-12-14-Speech-3-537-000"
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"en.20111214.32.3-537-000"2
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"Madam President, thank you very much for this lively discussion. I would like to start my answer by saying that, for the countries that joined the European Union in 2007, the same transitional arrangements apply as for the intake of 2004, and the same arrangements also apply to Croatia, for which the agreement was recently signed.
The Commission will check at the beginning of next year whether the Member States that have a right in this context have provided, together with the notification, an explanation – with supporting evidence and pertinent arguments – on the existence of a serious labour market disturbance or threat thereof. If a Member State has, for example, not provided an explanation at all or has not provided an explanation with sufficient data and pertinent arguments, the Commission will ask the Member State to provide the missing information.
The Commission services will examine the notification and the explanations and the data provided by the Member States. I am planning to present my summary to the ministers in the EPSCO Council in February.
This also allows us to look at the experience of the 2004 group by way of comparison. This I believe strongly supports the argument that the receiving countries hugely benefited from mobile workers from new Member States, and also the United Kingdom, on which there has been an exchange of views in the debate.
I think it is very important to say that, despite the fact that the actual number of workers coming from Poland and other countries was much higher than originally expected, we have to stress the enormous economic benefit of this contribution as opposed to speaking about these mobile workers being a burden on social security or the health care system.
I think it is very useful to look at the debates in Germany and Austria, in which I participated in the spring period of this year, before 1 May, when these two countries also eventually had to open up their labour markets for the 2004 intake. There was clearly a feeling that these two countries probably lost out by maintaining the restrictions until the last possible day, and that perhaps it would have been much wiser for them to have opened up earlier, especially because of the specific demographic conditions of Germany and also the very good labour market performance of the large number of vacancies this country has. I think this should be a lesson and an example for others.
In the current situation, I think we have to look at the concrete labour market conditions in each and every country and not only the European average. As we all know, the European averages are not very encouraging. We have been stuck with a very high unemployment rate – about 10% – and the coming year is not expected to be very easy. However, this average masks very great discrepancies, and this is why I would agree with those who suggest that, in countries where the unemployment rate is very low, like Austria or the Netherlands, it will be very difficult to provide factual justification for the maintenance of these restrictions.
I also have to stress that some Members of the House rightly pointed to the very complex and sometimes (unfortunately) xenophobic discussions in the Netherlands vis-à-vis mobile worker citizens from other EU Member States. Such discourse definitely does not help a constructive solution or response to this question to emerge.
It is very clear that the economies of some of these countries we are speaking about need more workers, also from other EU countries. The business community is expressing this opinion, and I think wise policy makers will pay attention to this. We have been engaged with the governments of these countries: I have written letters to all of them and explained what the rules are and what we expect.
I can tell you that we have so far received only one notification or request from Member States about the extension of the restrictions. Previous experience has shown that Member States tend to wait until the very end of the period to send their notifications, and so far only the United Kingdom has sent one, on 24 November.
This notification states that the UK decided to retain labour market restrictions following the advice from the Independent Migration Advisory Committee, which stated in its report of 4 November 2011 that, based on an analysis of recent labour market indicators, the UK labour market is in a state of serious disturbance and that removing existing restrictions would increase the risk of an increased inflow of EU2 nationals, with a potential negative impact on the UK labour market. As we know from new statistics, unemployment in the UK is at a 17-year high, but I think it has to be stressed that foreign workers should not be blamed for this. We have to look at the situation in the case of the UK and, should others come, on a case-by-case basis."@en1
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