A few days ago Newsnight on BBC2 did a report on migration from the new EU member states. They interviewed Katinka Barysch…and a Polish builder working in London.

Although the complaint is valid, the resulting legislation, in typical Eurocrat style, does little to harm either the new EU countries and the countries that limit the free movement of workers from those countries.

First the contention is that there wouldn’t be that many people who will use that right
Second, the countries that limit that right AFAIK do it by using a quota system.

If those two points are valid there will be no problem.

The exception may be Germany, but given the unemployment levels there it is not without reason that they don’t want a big influx of workers into their labour market. It is unclear how Germany would benefit in the short term from that labour influx.

And as for the following opinion:

“Doubts are mounting about the benefits of joining; for many, Brussels now seems less a guarantor of stability than a faceless authority issueing regulations on how Poles should cook their kielbasa.”

I don’t see how anyone that has looked at the EU can doubt that it benefits those that are joining.
Even those countries that for all kinds of reasons choose not to join the EU (Switzerland, Norway) adhere to almost all the rules and regulations of the EU, because in the end they made the assesment that they would benefit from it.

I think it is more a question of cold feet.
Now that the day nears that they finally will become members of the EU they are thinking about all the negative things, about the things they will have to give up. It’s a bit like the East Germans romancing about the time before the reunification.

The same effect is also present among the current members of the EU. It is as if they suddenly realise that there are real consequences. That the expansion of the EU will have a real impact in their countries.

It is nothing to worry about. In the long run the expansion of the EU will benefit both the current members and those joining it.

The sentence you quoted doesn’t really express an opinion; it’s simply a fact that doubts in these countries are mounting. Jiri Pehe wrote about this last year, here:
http://www.pehe.cz/Clanky/2003/08-25-projectsyndicate.htm

Whether these doubts are justified or not is another thing. To put it simply, I guess this is mainly a problem of bad PR.

Another fact: A majority of all these countries have recently voted that despite any reservations, EU membership is a net benefit. So I’d say these feet aren’t all that cold. This in itself is pretty remarkable (and that’s an opinion) given that current EU countries have done so little to make the Union seem appealing.

I’m basically a euro-phile (if that can be said of an Amerian) but I wish Western Europe would stop assuming that everybody’s so 100% ecstatic about the idea of joining their club.

Dutch: “It is nothing to worry about. In the long run the expansion of the EU will benefit both the current members and those joining it.”

There was and is a strong case for trade and market liberalisation in Europe as well as a qualified case for harmonisation of technical standards - I say “qualified” because some benighted character once had the “brilliant” idea about a decade back of harmonising the plugs for household electric appliances, which would have necessitated the rewiring of all offices, factories, shops and homes in Britain. And then there was that infelicitous proposal for a mandatory analogue standard for High Definition TV in Europe just before Digital TV was launched.

That said, it is not stark, staringly obvious that we benefit from the Common Agricultural Policy, many of the imperatives in the Social Chapter or would benefit by signing up to join the Eurozone, especially seeing as how miserably the Eurozone economy has been performing lately and how the Belgian finance minister in 1996 commended European monetary union as a good way of preventing the encroachment of Anglo-Saxon values - for which we have much to thank those good, enlightened folk who came from what is now Germany and the Netherlands to settle in England in the 5th and 6th centuries.

Nor is it obvious that we all would benefit if the drive towards European federalism finally succeeded in extinguishing the historic nation states of Europe. The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 to bring to an end the Thirty Years War in Europe was a great idea.

Viva variable geometry!

The sentence you quoted doesn’t really express an opinion; it’s simply a fact that doubts in these countries are mounting. Jiri Pehe wrote about this last year, here:
http://www.pehe.cz/Clanky/2003/08-25-projectsyndicate.htm

I called it an opinion more because of the second part of the sentence (about how to cook). But it is indeed a fact that the enthousiasm of people is diminishing. Or doubts are mounting as the quote says.

As to the article I would say - welcome back to reality. The last part of that reality is that it is neccesary to accept that the euro is not going to solve any monetary problems. The euro is not going to save anyone. Not even Germany or France.
Or the Netherlands, which at this moment also has problems in keeping the 3% deficit limit.

Many if not all reservations and doubts were already known when the new EU countries applied and voted for EU memberschip, so why is the enthousiasm waning after those decisions have been taken? That’s why I called it a case of cold feet. The benefits of the memberschip are already discounted and the negative aspects are highlighted for various reasons. But the decisions have been made so why stick with the negative? Why join the EU with a sense of disappointment?

I’m basically a euro-phile (if that can be said of an Amerian) but I wish Western Europe would stop assuming that everybody’s so 100% ecstatic about the idea of joining their club.

It is not that I think anyone in the new EU countries should be ecstatic, far from that.
Even in the current EU countries not everyone is that ecstatic. But the deal is done. It is going to happen. And I see no reason whatsoever to present this as a negative event.

I’m not a fan of objective and unbiased journalism, so I don’t expect anyone to stop writing about the negative aspects of the EU, in fact writing about it is important because hopefully it will cause improvement.

But at the same time I want to stress again (and again) that the enlargement of the EU is a positive thing!

“Many of the eastern countries, such as the Czech Republic, actually see more immigration than emigration, with workers from Ukraine and other countries further east moving there in search of higher wages and often working illegally.”

This is a really interesting point Scott. I have been digging around trying to get info on this myself. These countries badly need to attract immigrants as their population problems are generally worse than the Western EU members. They also have much less accumulated wealth to see them through the mess. So immigration is vital, my only doubt is whether they will be able to attract it in sufficient quantities, and then this only moves the problem further east as Russia and the Ukraine lose vital working age population.

“not Czech IT geeks in London”

This raises a different question: is there really any reason for IT geeks, or others who can work over the internet to move at all these days. Isn’t the migration trend more likely to be down the skill ladder.

Edward:

On immigration into central Europe

This is a really interesting point Scott. I have been digging around trying to get info on this myself. These countries badly need to attract immigrants as their population problems are generally worse than the Western EU members. They also have much less accumulated wealth to see them through the mess. So immigration is vital, my only doubt is whether they will be able to attract it in sufficient quantities, and then this only moves the problem further east as Russia and the Ukraine lose vital working age population.

Migration Information is a good site to go for more information on international migration. The country profiles they have are particularly interesting.

On the subject of whether the new member-states will be able to attract immigrants, I’m agnostic. I can easily see Slovenia, the former Czechoslovakia, and Hungary becoming immigration magnets--those countries have generally seen either net immigration or fairly balanced migration patterns, Slovenia has a pool of labour to draw upon elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia, and Hungary has millions of much poorer co-ethnics it could conceivably draw upon. I’m more skeptical about Poland and the Baltic States, given the relatively lower living standards, though apparently there’s up to a half-million immigrants working in Poland right now (Ukrainians, Belarusians, Vietnamese, Armenians). Romania and Bulgaria? Romania, just possibly, via Moldovan immigration, over the medium to long term.

You’re quite right that this replacement migration in central Europe will only exacerbate the demographic problems of eastern (and southeastern?) Europe. Barring the imposition of an Iron Curtain at the Bug and Prut, though, there’s just too large a gap already for emigration westward to be contained.

I’ve done a paper on Poland and its relationship with its eastern neighbours, focusing particularly on migration as representative on human relationships. Lemme see if there’s some sources--E-mail me.