Their Own Immigrants
Central Europe Digest
Posted: 29 Dec 2006
Do Come, But Make Sure You Take Your Time
When reports surfaced in Romanian newspapers that the British government had decided to curb immigration from Bulgaria and Romania, the national mood vacillated between cynicism and a chronic sense of historical betrayal. After the monitoring report, delivered on September 26 by the European Council, had confirmed January 1, 2007 as the EU accession date for Bulgaria and Romania, guarded anticipation had given way to elation in newspapers and domestic political statements. Romanians will officially join their European "family," proclaimed the media. But under the scheme proposed by John Reid, UK Secretary of State for the Home Department, only low-skilled immigration in the agricultural and food processing sectors from the two countries is to be allowed in, capped at 19,750 work permits. Apparently, the European "family" mistook the returning cousin for the gardener.
Many Romanians feared that EU accession would be followed by a bad case of enlargement fatigue - a cause of much concern after the rejection of the proposed EU constitution in France and the Netherlands in the summer of 2005. When the European Commission president Jose Manuel Barosso stated on September 26, after a meeting with the French Prime Minister, that it would be "imprudent" to contemplate any new entrants until the EU found a solution to "institutional questions" (codeword for halting the enlargement process and focusing on promoting integration within the EU), there was a tangible sense in Romania of having caught the last train. Despite UK Minister for Europe Geoff Hoon's announcement on November 15 that the British labor market would stay shut for no more than a year, Mr. Reid's plans reinforced worries that "enlargement fatigue" would soon be replaced by "new member fatigue." These fears seemed to be confirmed when the Irish government - followed by the governments of Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium - announced that they too would not open their borders to Romanian or Bulgarian workers. In Hungary, where the government recently issued 90,000-odd work permits to Romanians (who account for about 76 percent of its foreign workers), the government considered imposing "some limits," while Italy and Greece expressed similar concerns about the expected wave of immigrants. The latest country to join the chorus has been Iceland, which - though it is not even an EU member state - plans to close its labor market until January 1, 2009.
The Romanian response to this tepid welcome was predictable. Some columnists in Bucharest charged that Western countries treated Romanians like second-class citizens. The resentment was understandable on a private level, but its public display was the result of either unawareness or selective amnesia. According to Annex VII, Section 1 of the Treaties of Accession that Romania and Bulgaria signed on April 25, 2005 in Luxembourg, any EU member has the right to impose an initial two-year curb on immigration, followed by an extension of up to five years, if need be, and, "in case of serious disturbances of its labor market or threat thereof," enforce such measures for up to seven years. Considering the fact that these "transitional arrangements" were specifically included in the treaties signed by Romania and Bulgaria, statements such as the one made by Mr. Reid should have come as rather unsurprising.
But legal provisos were not the only hint that unrestricted immigration would be an unlikely proposition. The statements uncannily mirrored the prevalent attitude toward further enlargement. A Eurobarometer poll released in May 2006 showed that 55% of EU-25 interviewees saw enlargement as positive, with older member states less enthusiastic than newer ones. At the same time, an average of 63% of respondents in 21 out of the 25 member countries agreed that the enlargement would have a negative impact on their domestic job markets. Germany was the most wary at 80%.
The reaction to the September monitoring report was a mixed bag as well. A victor's assured smile it was not. Even as Romanian politicians rushed to apportion the political capital, they could not ignore the safeguard clauses which can yet deprive the two countries of much-cherished EU funds. At the same time, their citizens were still to be denied access to the Schengen area, much as the populations of the ten countries accepted in the previous enlargement wave in 2004.
Nor did the mood in Brussels resemble that of a friend's embracing arms. Many European politicians deemed Romania and Bulgaria not quite fit for EU membership, although they were painfully aware that delaying accession may actually slow down domestic reform. While Bulgaria was more of a disappointment, especially regarding its failure to address a dismal record of high-level corruption and organized crime, Romania failed to provide a clear contrast.
In retrospect, Romania's triumph over Bulgaria was that it stood out as the country triggering merely moderate concern. It did get rid of its four infamous "red flags," which signaled grave problems outstanding from the last country report issued on May 16, but only by downgrading the risk level to the category of "yellow" flags - milder evils, though bulkier in stock (44 in total, covering 16 areas of the EU acquis communitaire). Unsurprisingly, in the end, neither country could improve its record to the level of "green" flags. The September report, however, pushed for conditional accession and, in a slightly awkward show of linguistic creativity, eschewed the flag lingo altogether in favor of the wordier "outstanding issues that remain to be addressed."
Immigration Leaks
With so much recrimination going about in the Romanian media, public bitterness increased a notch after The Sun published in its November 1st issue an alleged leaked report compiled by the UK Immigration Minister Liam Byrne and the Minister for Europe Geoff Hoon warning of increased criminal activity in the wake of Romania's and Bulgaria's accession. The report notably asserted that Romanian gangs committed 80 to 85% of all ATM-related crime in Britain, causing losses estimated at ?65.8 million for 2005. The next day's issue followed up with the story of a trafficked, abused woman who was sold by Romanian mobsters to the tabloid's journalists and went on to present the case of an Romanian ATM gang whose method of choice was to fit cash machines with fake fronts. The article put at 173 the number of contract killings that have occurred in Bulgaria since 1992 - many of them in broad daylight - and ran violent photos, including one taken at the scene of the murder of Emil Kyulev, the Bulgarian banker gunned down in 2005 as he sat in traffic in Sofia.
In an effort to contain the PR disaster, the Romanian Ministry of Administration and the Interior (MAI) blasted the reports as "exaggerations" and tried to cast doubts on the figures. The heated communiqué stood in sharp contrast with the more restrained press release of the British embassy in Bucharest, which reiterated that tackling organized crime was a top priority of the British government, while declining tactfully to comment on the leaked report. The final confirmation that there is serious concern in London about a rise in criminality after the January accession came with the news that Scotland Yard would dispatch a team of five detectives to Sofia in a matter of weeks to share crime-fighting techniques with local officials.
Romanians are probably right to complain that the number of students or hardworking professionals is never included in such statistics, but the size of Romanian immigration would worry any EU government, especially one that has already indulged in faulty forecasts. Before the 2004 wave of accession, the British government sought to mollify worries about unbridled immigration by forecasting that 13,000 people from the new EU members would move to the country every year until the end of the decade. But in August 2006, the Home Office Minister Tony McNulty revised the number of immigrants to a whopping 600,000 - self-employed professionals included. Stricken by high unemployment, Poland is said to account for more than half of the total amount, although some challenged the accuracy of this estimate too (John Denham, the Labour MP for Southampton Itchen, reckoned that the real number was close to 1 million).
Given the extent of the miscalculation, second-guessing potential immigrants is understandably not a favorite pastime in Westminster. The alacrity with which Romanians took advantage of the 2002 EU decision to lift visa travel requirements added to the sense that immigration ought to be reined in. During a BBC interview, Daniela Andreescu, head of the Romanian Department for Foreign Employment, pegged the total number of immigrants to EU countries at 1.3 million, but the official estimate makes no mention of illegal workers. The typical approximation speaks of two million immigrants, with Italy and Spain ranking as the most popular destinations, especially among seasonal workers, owing to perceived parallels in climate, language, and culture.
And yet, contemplating a low unemployment rate and a wholesome real increase in GDP, Calin Popescu Tariceanu, the current Romanian Prime Minister, could feel justified when he stated that Romania would not pose the same immigration risk as Poland. The September 8 press release of the National Institute of Statistics in Romania features a 5.1% unemployment rate for the first semester of the year and a 7.4% increase in GDP from the same semester in 2005. Compare these indicators with Poland's. Even if the Economist Intelligence Unit forecasts a real GDP growth of 5.2% in 2006, the figures floated by the Polish Labor Ministry on November 7 still talk of a disturbing 14.9% unemployment rate. Polish President Lech Kaczynski may have been right when he complained that many of his compatriots working in the UK had registered as unemployed at home, driving the rate higher than it should be, but it is doubtful that the correct rate would look more cheering.
By comparison, Mr. Tariceanu must have fewer unsettling thoughts. The roughly 20% of the working-age population employed abroad, legally or not, have certainly contributed their share to driving down unemployment. At the same time, the remittances are anything but petty. According to an August 2006 study of the Romanian National Bank, analyzing private bank transfers realized in 2005, the total estimated value of remittances is €2.8 billion. Other sources speak more wildly of €3.5-4 billion in the past year, enough to cover almost half of the 2005 current account deficit. Still, potential optimism should not go unchecked. Income disparity remains high. The average income in terms of purchasing power parity in Romania is 28% of the Western level - as opposed to 45% in Central Europe. The economic incentive for immigration may still be strong enough to drive more Romanians toward wealthier EU countries.
Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You
Romanians may have to deal with the above Biblical version of the Golden Rule sooner than they would like. Unremitting immigration to the EU has slowly depleted the trained labor force to the point that on October 30, Traian Basescu, the country's president, warned that the labor shortage in the construction and banking industries as well as in the public sector threatened to become a crisis. The demographic indicators do not look reassuring either. On a list including Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia, the UNFPA State of World Population 2006 report ranks Romania the highest in the categories of infant mortality or maternal mortality per 1,000 live births and the lowest in the category of life expectancy for both men and women. One obvious alternative is to rely on Moldovan immigration. But the shifting mass of temporary workers could find Romanian society unprepared and the immigration wave may also result in an influx of naturalized residents.
According to Romanian law, a citizen of the Republic of Moldova is eligible for Romanian citizenship in two cases: if he had such a status before World War II (when the territory was part of the Romanian state) or if he is the descendant of such a citizen. Since 1991, Romanian citizenship has been granted to around 100,000 Moldovans - a number that is increasing along with the prospects that Romania will receive the green light from the EU. Even if only 70,000 Moldovan citizens (2% of the country's population) stated in the 2004 referendum that they were ethnic Romanians, the state received around 400,000 applications for citizenship between August 2005 and August 2006. Although a case can be made that the figures were tampered with or that some Romanian Moldovans did not declare their ethnicity during the referendum, the discrepancy was revealing enough to make Mihai Razvan Ungureanu, the Romanian Foreign Affairs Minister, decry the situation as "surprising, yet unfair."
Nature abhors a vacuum. The combined pull of better income and visa-free travel opportunities will almost certainly make more Romanians look for jobs abroad and more Moldovans contemplate a life on the other side of the Western border. Until now, Romanians have grown used to viewing themselves at the receiving end of any EU deal - the latest example being the immigration row. Yet, fairly soon, they may have to confront some tough immigration questions of their own. The hope is that, in the process of searching for answers, Romanians will not forget where they came from.
Serban Popescu is a PhD. candidate at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Center for European Policy Analysis.