So here we are immigrating to the EU

On the 23rd october The EU Commission finally presented its two directives on immigration.
This is a major step forward : the EU is finally giving some concrete proposals on immigration, a field which is very much a soveriegn one. A brief flashback on this:

In 1999 at the Tampere summit in Finland, the EU decided to put forward proposals on a common EU immigration policy. This makes sense, bearing in mind that borders between EU member states are disappearing. However, after 9/11 most political agendas were chaotic, including the EU's, and most proposals that were made after then were to do with limiting illegal immigration.

Things changed a bit in September 2007. The EU commission published an annual report on immigration, and the Portugese presidency (of the EU) organised a high level conference on the subject on 13-14th september. The vice president of the Commission Franco Frattini, who is also the commissioner for Justice, liberty and security- and therefore immigration- gave a speech outlining what this common EU policy would consist of.

This common policy would be have two main goals : limiting illegal immigration while encouraging the kind of immigration that is good for the EU. This is relatively simple to understand : 5% of qualified workers from third states (read Africa, Asia including India, middle East etc) bugger off to the USA, Australia or Canada. 85% of economic immigration to the EU is unqualified labour. This does not mean that the EU does not need qualified labour immigration. Au contraire. In 2050 a third of the EU's population will be over 65. The total population of the EU will start declining after 2025, and from 2011 the work force will be declining, meaning a serious worker shortage in sectors such as engineering, IT or medicine.

An obvious solution to balance out demographics is to bring people in from the outside. To do this, it seems necessary to harmonise an immigration policy on an EU wide level, for the simple reason that twenty-seven different entrance and working procedures may seem off-putting to most people considering immigration to the Union.

The Commission is proposing several directives (by end of 2009) which the Parliament and the Council will have to approve if the are ever going to be enforced. Frattini, after his speech inLisbon in September, unveiled two proposals on October 23rd. One concerns are general directive framework for people (from outside the EU) who live and work legally in the EU. The other is a "blue card" to encourage the immigration of highly qualified workers.

The blue card is basically the EU's answer to an American green card ,though the two do present important differences. Check out the BBC website for these.

The basic features of the blue card are as follows : it allows someone highly qualified from a non-EU state, which means someone who has the equivalemnt of a diploma, three yers working experience and a job waiting for him that is paid at least three times the local minimum wage, to come and live & work in the EU. This blue card would allow the person, and his family to live & work in a member state, al with the same procedure. After the two years, the card can be renewed and the person can then move to any Member state he or she chooses. That said, Member states would still be allowed to determine how many people they would allow in to their territory, and the preference communautaire would apply, meaning that the job would only go to a third country national if nobody from the EU wants it.

The blue card is meant to make the EU more attractive as a single block for potential highly qualified workers. The second directive that Frattini detailed was more general, applying to all third country nationals already living n the EU and aiming to make their working conditions better. Indeed, it appears that there is a "right's gap" between EU and non-EU workers, usually concerning wages, holiday's, representation and education, etc. the nex direcive basically says hat the same rights apply no matter where you are from.

These two proposals are the first in a series. In 2008 Frattini will unveil proposals for directives on the immigration of seasonal workers, paid trainees and transfers within multinational compmanies. All to make working in modern Europe more attractive to potential brainiacs from beyond our borders.

All very nice, but a couple of problems remain. The first is the question of the brain drain. Obviously, attracting highly qualified third country workers means taking them from somewhere, somewhere that probably needs them more. So part of the plan is to introduce circular migration, a plan to kindly encourage migrants to leave after 'two or three' years. This, it appears in the speeches is terrific for everyone : Europe gets a bit of qualified migrant, third world gets a bit of European savoir faire. But is this going to work? On the one hand the EU is going to work on integration (check out the Frattini speech) and on the other they think that people should return home in order to reduce the brain drain . Sounds complicated.

The directive isn't anywhere near being enforced yet. It still needs to be approved by twenty seven member states, unanimously, and germany and Austria are already pulling faces, as is France. France has in fact unveiled a master plan for the rench EU presidency, and one of the priorities is immigration.