In mid-February, British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced that he was also considering the possibility of introducing quotas on entry into the country for residents of Eastern Europe. The conversation concerns citizens of eight countries of the former communist bloc, which in May of this year are to become members of the European Union - Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
According to estimates by the British Home Office, immediately after the EU enlargement, between five and thirteen thousand residents of the new EU member states will arrive here. According to estimates by non-governmental organizations, there will be at least 40,000 migrants. Under current rules, when the new Europeans enter the unified Europe, they will receive in Britain the same rights as citizens of the old EU countries.
“I work here as a student,” says Jolita, a Lithuanian. “That is, every year I have to pay for my studies and go to college to be sure that in a year I will get a visa again.” Jolita has been in London for three years now. She is currently a canteen manager, and before that she worked in a hotel. Unlike many other Eastern Europeans who come to Britain to earn money, Jolita lives here legally. She has a visa, but only a student visa. To obtain it, she pays for an English language course at a college. After May, Jolita will stop doing this, because EU citizens have the right to free language courses.
However, the main problem for supporters of restrictions is not the right to free movement or free English courses, but work permits and the right to social benefits. As for work permits, almost all EU countries have decided to shield their labor markets from the new Europeans. The last to do so in January was ultra-liberal Sweden, and before it Denmark. Germany has introduced work restrictions for citizens of the Eastern European eight until 2011. And only two EU countries have no such restrictions at all - Ireland and Britain. This is partly explained by the fact that Britain is experiencing a shortage of skilled workers, as Home Secretary David Blunkett reminded us the other day.
But the right to work is inextricably linked with other rights - to unemployment benefits, pensions and other social payments. The tabloid press is sounding the alarm that, as soon as they set foot on British soil, the new Europeans will run not to the job center but to the social security office. To calm public fear, Tony Blair stated that the British cabinet is studying the potential risk of EU enlargement and is ready to take measures designed to reduce the country's attractiveness for their new European brethren.
Of course, this statement caused a storm of indignation - mainly from liberal newspapers and humanitarian organizations. “It would be better for Britain not to introduce any restrictions,” insists Habib Rahman, head of the British Council for Aid to Immigrants. “The situation will be easier to control if people can openly come and work here. Otherwise, the same thing will happen as in Germany, where a huge black labor market has already formed. And it is important to remember that immigration benefits the economy.”
But many find words about immigration as a benefit unconvincing. “It is important to find a balance between the potential benefit of immigration and the price we are willing to pay for it,” believes Sir Andrew Green, head of the independent UK immigration research organization Migration Watch UK. “In Britain we are already paying a fairly high price for our immigration policy, because our small island is already quite overcrowded.”
Migration Watch UK takes a moderately conservative position. However, I heard the description of Britain as an overcrowded island from another of my interlocutors, Phil Edwards, press secretary of the far-right British National Party. “We are not at all against accepting residents of Poland, Hungary and other similar countries. After all, they are genetically the same as us. Another matter is the Gypsies! They are not Europeans, they are Asians, and they live mainly by crime. There is no room on our island as it is!” Edwards is indignant.
The outright racists of the British National Party are political marginals. But fears about the influx onto “our small island” of camps and veritable hordes of Eastern European Gypsies, albeit in a much more decent and veiled form, are expressed by representatives of virtually all mainstream parties. As are calls to generally limit the influx of Eastern Europeans into Britain.
“It seems to me that when we join the EU, there will be a real rush, because in Lithuania there are many young people like me who are sitting without work and waiting for May. Recently a survey was conducted there, according to which 37% of Lithuanians want to come and work in Britain,” says Lithuanian Jolita. Lithuania's unemployment rate is 17%, so one can, of course, understand the Eastern Europeans preparing for the rush. One can also understand the Western European governments trying to somehow prevent it.
But here one can recall that similar fears were expressed almost 20 years ago before the accession of Spain and Portugal to the European Community. No rush happened then. Many analysts are confident that it will not happen now, either, in May 2004. And all these fears and emergency measures, they say, testify mainly to the fact that the old Europe is not yet ready, either psychologically or economically, to unite with the new one.