Britain
to close door on Romanian, Bulgarian migrants
Sweden’s,
Germany’s labour markets open for
Romanians as of 2007.
published in
issue 3793 page 9 at 2006-10-23
LONDON -
Britain is to announce plans
next week to restrict immigration from Romania and Bulgaria when the two eastern
European countries join the EU on January 1, newspapers said Sunday. The
Observer said Home Secretary John Reid was to announce time-limited controls on
the right of citizens from both countries to work in Britain once they become
members of the European Union, AFP informs.
He was to say that Britain
would take a limited number of unskilled workers for low-level jobs such as
fruit picking, but will not offer a general right to work, the weekly said,
quoted by AFP.
Such a policy would be a marked change from
Britain’s open-door approach
when Poland and seven other eastern
European former communist states joined the EU in May 2004.
Britain was then one of only three
countries to allow unrestricted access to residents from those countries.
The government predicted that up to 13,000 residents from eastern Europe
would come to Britain — but
so far up to 600,000 have arrived, with thousands of manual workers arriving
from Poland. Reid said last month that
Bulgarians and Romanians would likely face restricted entry to
Britain once they swell the number of
EU states to 27. The Observer said the move reflected concerns about the impact
of immigration on working-class Britons and fears that Polish immigrants were
entering the country in unsustainable numbers.
The Sunday Times said it
came as new government figures showed that four in every five eastern European
immigrants earn little more than the minimum wage and pay on average half the
amount of taxes that Britons pay.
Existing member states cannot stop
citizens of a fellow EU country from entering, but restricting the right to work
would reduce the attraction for those wanting to migrate.
A Home Office
spokesman said Saturday that Britain’s immigration strategy for
the two EU newcomers, which had not been finalised, would involve a “gradual
approach” to offering their citizens access to the labour market.
The
main opposition Conservatives said the government had been “dithering” over
Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants and it was now time to “get on with it”. “We
should have roughly the same policy as the other main European countries so that
we only take in the people who will benefit our economy,” said home office
affairs spokesman Damian Green.
The lobby activities by
UK continue
Still,
regarding how UK decides to approach the opening of
the labour force for the workers from the future EU Member States, there is
still much uncertainty. The Romanian authorities continue their lobby activities
in relation to this, President Traian Basescu informing, at the end of last
week, that he discussed in relation to this, with the British PM Tony Blair
during the informal reunion of the heads of States and Governments from the EU
Members States, held in Lahti, Finland. “From the viewpoint of the
issues related to the access into the labour market, we do not have a problem
other that related to the debates in UK. I discussed with Tony Blair.
Contacts on this topic will take place over the next days and we hope to settle,
in two weeks, the issue of canceling visas for the Romanian citizens and the one
related to labour market access,” as Basescu declared, according to
Rompres.
As of January 1, 2007, the Romanian workers will have the option
to work legally in Germany
and in Sweden, the only
restriction being imposed by the Parliament in Berlin. The Romanians who wish to work in
Germany must produce evidence to the
fact that they have worked at least one year, with legal documents, in this
country. According to Antena 3, this provision is included in a draft law submitted by the German Government to the
Parliament in Berlin. The normative act also sets that the
members of the families of those who work in Germany could
also work in this country only provided that the time of accession they were
living together with those who had the work right by at least 18 months.
Sweden informed that it would not
impose any restrictions to the Romanian workers. Stockholm Government has not
made yet an official decision in this respect, but official sources affirm that
the same unconditional access policy will be adopted as it happened for the
workers of those countries that are already EU members.
Based on the
data released by the Office for Labour Force Migration, over 130,000 Romanian
citizens left between 2002 and 2006 to work in Germany with
legal documents.
by Nine oClock
(C) 2000-2005
Nine o'Clock
