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EU Mobility

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A Second Chance for Europe

Abstract

The free movement of people and workers is one of the cornerstones of the EU. Intra-EU mobility has overwhelmingly benefited the citizens of EU member states, both in countries of work and countries of origin. Early concerns in destination countries about welfare migration and the crowding out of less-educated workers have been broadly refuted. However, EU mobility policies still need a significant deepening and upgrading to deal with special cases of fraudulent contracts and crowding out in sub-sectors. What remains difficult is the full integration of some groups of mobile EU workers because of linguistic and cultural barriers. There is also a new challenge to EU policy: the integration of circular migrants. Here EU countries should be encouraged to harmonise administration and cut red tape.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The boundaries of free mobility were eventually defined by the European Court of Justice, not by EU treaties. This court shifted free movement of workers to the free movement of persons.

  2. 2.

    There is a wide range of measures available to assess the competences of individuals; see for example the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (OECD 2016).

  3. 3.

    In total 47.3 million people (9.4% of the population) lived in the EU and were born outside their resident country. Of these, 31.4 million (6.3%) were born outside the EU (UN Statistics 2015).

  4. 4.

    EU-15: pre-accession EU states. EU-12: Central and Eastern European countries and Cyprus and Malta (EU-8), joining the EU in 2004 and Bulgaria and Romania (EU-2), joining the European Union in 2007.

  5. 5.

    This is one third of the number of newly arriving non-EU workers in the UK.

  6. 6.

    Sylvie Lair—Case 39/86.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IZA-Bonn and Maastricht University, Kloosterweg 54, 6241, Bunde, The Netherlands

    Jo Ritzen

  2. IZA-Bonn; CEU, Budapest; UEBA and CELSI Bratislava, Zvolenská 29, 821 09, Bratislava, Slovakia

    Martin Kahanec

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  1. Jo Ritzen
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Correspondence to Jo Ritzen .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. UNU-Merit/ Graduate School of Governance, Maastricht University , Maastricht, The Netherlands

    Jo Ritzen

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Ritzen, J., Kahanec, M. (2017). EU Mobility. In: Ritzen, J. (eds) A Second Chance for Europe. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57723-4_5

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