Prof. dr. Bogdan Murgescu  (Bucharest University)

Paper presented at the International Conference The Enlargement of the EU and East Asian Regional Reorganization and Integration (Aoyama Gakuin University, December 14, 2008)

 

 

Mobility and Labor Migration in the EU Enlargement: the case of Romania

-         summary –

 

Human mobility and migration are expanding features of the modern world. Since the 19th century, most Europeans changed residence at least once during their lifetime. While historians have focused more on trans-Atlantic migration and its connection with the globalization of the late 19th century, intra-European and even sub-national migration affected more people than the migration to America or to the various Western colonies.

Human mobility and migration were major issues also in post WWII Europe. Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 stated:

  1. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
  2. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

These principles ran against the practice of many states. The communist states were especially inclined to restrict the right of their citizen to travel abroad or to emigrate, and the construction of the Berlin Wall became a symbol of the Iron Curtain dividing Europe. The demand for free human mobility was therefore crucial in the movements which led to the demise of communism in Eastern Europe. .

Romania had been one of the most restrictive communist countries in Eastern Europe. Therefore, the right to free mobility was included in the 10-points Proclamation of the National Salvation Front in December 1989, and the liberalization of exit for Romanian citizen was legally enforced through the Decree-Law no.10 on January 8, 1990.Since then, more than half of the Romanian population made use of the right to travel abroad. Most of these people came back, but some of them chose to migrate permanently to other countries or to move temporarily in order to accumulate financial resources before coming back.

One can distinguish several phases in this outward mobility of Romanian citizen after 1989:

  • 1990-1991 – permanent migration to Western Europe (especially Germans, but also many other Romanian citizen capitalizing on the unsettled political conditions in Romania) combined with trade trips to neighboring countries or to Turkey; many Western countries react to immigration by introducing visa requirement for Romanian (and other East European) citizen
  • 1992-1995 – beginning of temporary labor migration especially in constructions and services (main destinations: Israel, Turkey, Germany, Hungary)
  • 1996-2001 – diversification of labor migration to Italy, Canada, Spain; besides construction and services, increase also of agricultural labor
  • 2002-2006 – after the removal of visa requirements to the Schengen area (January 1, 2002), massive increase of the number of migrants to EU countries, especially to Italy and Spain; already about 2 million Romanians work abroad and their financial remittances became a major element in financing the external deficit of the country
  • 2007 – Romania became EU member, but most EU countries set up transition periods before liberalizing the access of Romanian citizen on their labor markets

The paper focuses on different patterns of labor migration and on the reactions in some West European countries, and tries to project developments in this field for the next decade. At the same time, it explores the feed-back effects on the Romanian economy in comparison with other European countries which have experienced massive labor migration in the second half of the 20th century.