What if EU mobility becomes EU emigration?

Organised by

• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
• EGPP: European Governance and Politics Programme

The freedom of movement of persons as an EU principle greatly facilitated short-to-medium term mobility and longer-term emigration of EU citizens from the EU’s southern and eastern peripheries. In the past 20 years, transitioning countries in the east and crisis ridden countries in the south have seen millions of their citizens move permanently to the EU’s industrial centres in the northwest. While theories of the single market predict win-win situations for sending and receiving countries, the social and political externalities of EU emigration in countries of origin are hardly accounted for. The talk presents findings of a research project that focuses parliamentary debates, party positions, and meso-level actor perspectives on the issue of emigration in Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, and Romania. The topic is a salient issue in EU emigration countries and promotes responses and policies along the socio-economic and cultural cleavage. Interestingly, debate of EU emigration is not part of the integration versus demarcation cleavage. The individual opportunities that the freedom of movement of persons offers are hardly questioned and the EU level response is limited to compensation via structural funds. Thus, sending states are confronted with the emigration conundrum. They need to balance the liberal and normative call for openness on exit, claimed by citizens as well as EU membership, with political and economic demands to incentivize stay, return, or the continued engagement with their citizens.