RFE/RL - The European Commission, the EU's executive body, is making a new bid to introduce a common immigration policy, with hopes to fill a growing shortage of labor in Europe.
EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini said in Brussels on Jan. 11 that with one of Europe's most populous generations now aging, skilled immigrants were needed to sustain economic growth. Frattini said EU citizens should not view immigrants as a threat to their societies but rather as a resource and opportunity.
The commission estimates that over the next 25 years, the EU's working population will fall by some 20 million people. And trends indicate populations will continue to decrease after that. Frattini said a policy that ensures orderly, legal immigration across the 25-nation bloc would help control spiraling illegal immigration, with its accompanying social problems.
"We need a joint EU approach in the area of economic migration. Without such an approach we even run the risk of increasing the number of irregular immigrants who cannot integrate and who will subsequently remain in the very margins of our societies," he said.
Frattini issued a "green paper" on immigration that contains an initiative for a union-wide debate leading to a draft of a common policy before the end of this year. Four years ago, the commission tried unsuccessfully to introduce a common policy. But that failed because some countries 's notably Germany and Austria 's were not willing to hand over powers in this sensitive area to Brussels.
This time the commission is treading carefully. Frattini's spokesman, Friso Roscam-Abbing, said the EU was not trying to take away the right of individual member states to decide what level of immigration, if any, they should have.
"There is no real, common, harmonized EU policy. What has been decided relatively recently, and what is now enshrined in the Constitutional Treaty, is the right of member states to determine the numbers, the volumes of migrants to be admitted, and obviously the commission is not touching upon that right at all," Roscam-Abbing said.
But he said that if a member state decided to allow economic migration, this would affect other member states. So the commission believes it makes sense to have a harmonized policy regarding immigration criteria and entry procedures. There's also the question of what rights an economic migrant should have.
The spokesman said demographic projections indicated aging populations throughout Europe, and that this clashed with the EU's Lisbon Agenda, under which the EU hoped to transform itself into the world's most competitive economy.
"Shouldn't we [therefore] think about devising a policy which would allow for migrants to enter the EU in a legal and safe way to take up skilled or unskilled labor, where necessary, with a view to filling in the gaps, and ensuring that we could become the most competitive economy, and ensuring that the aging population and low fertility rates, would not put a big burden on us?" Roscam-Abbing said.
The European economic demand for more foreign labor counteracts the tendency of many Europeans to view immigration negatively. They see it as disrupting social harmony, possibly reducing pay rates and promoting unemployment among locals. Far right parties 's such as the National Front in Britain and France and the now-disbanded Vlaamse Blok in Belgium 's have long urged an end to immigration from third-world countries.
The chairman of the British National Front, Tom Holmes, said immigration from non-European countries was unnecessary, and that instead, efforts should be made to raise birth rates inside the EU. And Holmes said there were people who thought the same way all around Europe.
Of course, large-scale immigration into Europe means a loss of skilled labor in the poorer countries. EU spokesman Roscam-Abbing said more research was needed on this subject.
He added that Europe could not simply take nurses, doctors, dentists, engineers or IT specialists from where they're urgently needed. The EU is trying to draw up a policy beneficial to all parties: the immigrants, their nations of origin and the receiving countries.
