Germany and Austria opened their labor markets for the EU class of 2004 over the weekend, the last EU nations to do so. However, based on press reports from Germany and Poland, there appear to be divergent views regarding how much labor will actually transfer.
The Frankfurter Allegmeine Zeitung believes that any Pole seeking work in western European already left in the 2000s, and that there will not be enough interest from skilled laborers who remain in Poland to meet Germany’s labor demands.
But a Polish weekly newsmagazine, Wprost, says Germany’s decision to open its labor markets will exacerbate Poland’s brain-drain and labor flight issues further.
“The number of people who want to leave Poland could exceed official forecasts,” they write. “The signs are there to be seen: the Germans are intent on attracting the Poles with enticing job offers, and the residents of ‘Poland B’, which includes the country’s poorest regions, are eager to find work.
I asked Dorota Dabrowski, executive director of the Warsaw-based American chamber of Commerce in Poland, for some help in resolving this discrepancy. She told me that the response for most Poles will be Nein, danke. Anyone educated or skilled enough to leave Poland would have done so in 2004. The language barrier is also not to be ignored. Many Poles living on the border who’d picked up a passable amount of Germany have already taken up jobs in the Bundesrepublik. But for the majority of Poles looking for work beyond their borders, the UK remains the destination of choice, both for reasons of language and preexisting networks of family and acquaintances.
“Germany will have few advantages over the UK labor market if at all,” she said.
Finally, it is not as if these two countries are the best of friends. Some recent policy proposals from rightist parties in the Netherlands that would kick out indigent migrants after three months points the way to what could be future treatment of Eastern European labor if Germans decide down the road they have a problem with their presence.
Certainly brain drain — and employment generally — remains an acute problem in Poland. But the lasting impact of these new open borders, seven years after Poland’s accession to the EU, will be minimal.
