Germany extends block on workers

  • 2008-05-01
  • By Marge Tubalkain-Trell

No to Berlin: Estonians will not be marching through the Brandenburg Gate any time soon.

TALLINN - The German government has decided to extend its blockade of Eastern European workers until 2011. Marta Traks, a leading specialist at European Employment Services, told The Baltic Times that the move was unlikely to seriously affect Estonian emigration.

"Estonians aren't so interested in going to Germany 's they mainly prefer Nordic countries like Sweden. Germany is in fifth or sixth place. The majority of people who want to go to Germany are those who don't speak Estonian," she said.

  Germany remains an unpopular migrant destination even after it canceled restrictions on machine, car, and electric engineers. Those who have graduated from a German university are also allowed to work there in the profession they were studying.

Although about 45,000 Estonians live and work abroad, most prefer Nordic countries such as Finland.
"The interest in going to Germany is low even though the interest of working abroad is twice as high as it was a year ago. Moreover, we do not have that many job offers to Germany," said a spokesperson for Human Resources OU, an organization which mediates jobs abroad.

Older European countries have agreed on seven-year-ban on workers from new EU member countries which applies to eight of the 10 countries that joined in May 2004. The exceptions were Cyprus and Malta.
It's a complicated scheme that allows older countries in the EU to limit access to their labor market through a number of different measures. For those who joined in 2004, these restrictions cannot be lifted sooner than April 30, 2011.

Great Britain, Sweden and Ireland were the only countries to open their labor markets immediately to those who joined in 2004, while other countries are gradually softening their restrictions.
In February, German Labor Minister Olaf Schultz announced he supports extending these restrictions because the flood of cheap labor could put Germans out of work. The move is also favored by both coalition parties in Germany 's The Christian Democrats and The Social Democrats.

Because of a high rate of unemployment and rising social charges, Germany instituted a labor market reform at the turn of the century with the goal of making the market more flexible.

People were not happy with the reforms, which ultimately resulted in less money 's putting some people in a much worse position. Today the economy is much more flexible than it was 10 years ago.
According to Eurostat, however, the unemployment rate was still quite high in February at 7.4 percent. However, it still is lower than it was in February 2007 when unemployment reached 8.7 percent. In March 2008, by contrast, the unemployment rate in Estonia was 2.7 percent.