Katsikas, D., (2013), “Brain drain, a new challenge for the Eurozone”, EurActiv, Opinion Article, 25 Νοεμβρίου.
Only a genuine growth agenda can nurture labour mobility, a pre-requisite for the efficient operation of the eurozone and ultimately, for the vision of a conflict-free Europe. Without such agenda mobility could become one of the principal factors of the eurozone’s disintegration, writes Dimitris Katsikas.
“As the crisis persists, news of increasing movement of the European labour force across borders becomes more common. Moreover, it emerges that increasingly, these migrants are young scientists and researchers from the crisis-hit countries of southern Europe moving to the countries of the North.
While in theory such a development should be viewed positively, the combination of a competitiveness deficit in Eurozone’s southern periphery and the region’s brain-drain is a cause for concern.
In theory, labour mobility is one of the basic economic balancing mechanisms, which allows a currency area to survive crises. When one area suffers an economic downturn and unemployment rises, the surplus labour force that cannot be employed moves to another area, which experiences growth and thus increased demand for labour, helping to restore balance in both cases.
However, European states are not united by common language, culture and labour market institutions, which facilitate labour mobility in federal states. As a result, labour mobility between Eurozone countries has traditionally been low and continued to be so during the early stages of the financial and economic crisis. This has started to change as the crisis dragged on and people in crisis-hit countries begun to realize that they could remain unemployed for many years. This realization has led to increased labour migration from these countries. In the past couple of years the numbers of labour migrants in the Eurozone have increased and the direction is always the same, from the countries of the periphery towards the countries of northern Europe.
It seems therefore that a key Eurozone deficiency may have been remedied. Surely that is good news then, isn’t it?
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Σχετικές Αναρτήσεις
- Hugh, E., (2013), “Can demography explain Portugal’s growth slump before the crash?”, A Fistful Of Euros Blog, 06 Οκτωβρίου.
- Παπακωνσταντίνου, Α., (2013), “Φυγή νέων επιστημόνων στο εξωτερικό: brain drain?, brain gain?”, Παρατηρητήριο για την Κρίση, Άρθρο Γνώμης Νο.11, Οκτώβριος.
- Zaiceva, Anzelika, Zimmermann, Klaus F., (2012), ‘Returning Home at Times of Trouble? Return Migration of EU Enlargement Migrants during the Crisis’, IZA Discussion Paper, N.7111.
- De Molli, V., (2013), “Looking at Europe’s Jobs Challenge: ‘A Way Out Does Exist!’”, EconoMonitor, 24 Σεπτεμβρίου.