Europe needs migrants despite unemployment

Europe needs more, not fewer, economic migrants despite public fears and high unemployment in core West European countries, EU Labour and Social Affairs Commissioner Vladimir Spidla said yesterday.

In an interview with Reuters, the former Czech prime minister disputed suggestions that the new EU executive headed by Jose Manuel Barroso was dominated by economic liberals uninterested in preserving social rights or public services.

"Over the next 20 years, there will be 20 million fewer workers in Europe, even including migrants," he said, pointing to an aging population and falling birth rates.

"Naturally, if you only look at the next two weeks, things look different. But in the EU we have to work on the long term and we definitely need immigration," said Mr Spidla, who set out the Commission's new "Social Agenda" yesterday.

He acknowledged that advocating greater labour migration was politically difficult at a time when unemployment in Germany has topped five million, reaching the highest level since the 1930s, but said it would be wrong to blame immigrants for the problem.

"Would the post-World War Two German economic miracle have been possible without 'guest workers'? Certainly not," he said.

Germany's neighbour, Austria, with roughly the same proportion of immigrants, had fewer than 4.5 per cent unemployed, about half the German level, he noted. Mr Spidla said he expected some of the 15 old EU member states would not extend curbs on the free movement of workers from the 10 new countries which joined in 2004 when the first two-year period expires next year.

"Based on my discussions, I expect some member states will not extend the transition period, but I can't name which ones."

While accepting that labour market policy remained a purely national responsibility, the commissioner said barriers to free movement had an economic cost because they prevented the enlarged EU internal market from working efficiently. "If you don't achieve free movement of people as well as capital and goods, you don't get a proper allocation of labour, one of Europe's key resources - qualified workers," he said.

EU countries would only be able to maintain generous levels of social welfare if they were economically competitive.

While he supported the Commission's proposal to liberalise the EU market for services, he said there were "well founded fears that cannot be swept aside" about preserving social services of public interest such as in healthcare.

Mr Spidla also advocated a more flexible retirement system to encourage more Europeans who were able to work later in life while providing pensions for those who needed to retire.