ECAS Report: second-class EU citizenship is bad for all[fr][de] 

The European Citizen Action Service (ECAS) has already published a first report , in October 2005, arguing against the so-called transitional measures that restrict the right of workers from the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia to find a job in those EU-15 countries which apply the measures. 

In a second report published on 5 September, ECAS elaborates its criticism and supplies more data to support it. The report also looks at economic, scientific, demographic, cultural and other benefits to be gained from the greater mobility of Europeans. 

Some of the report's key findings are: 

• The right to reside freely throughout the Union, as laid down by the Treaties and confirmed in a more precise manner by the Directive on the right of European citizens and their family members to reside freely on the territory of the Member States , "has still not become an independent and absolute status of Member State nationals, since the right to reside and the right to move freely are linked to social conditions", since the Directive "continues to operate a differentiation between European citizens i.e.: those who are economically active [...] and those who are not", so that " not being financially self-sufficient might render the right to free movement [...] void of content.";
• " Labour migrants complement the native workforce on the labour market and do not compete with them." Intra-EU migration  "might help to fill skills bottleneck and ease the difficulties of sectors where labour shortages occur";
• Sending countries would also profit from more mobility, especially because of the accrual of migrant remittances, and; 
• Mobility and migration will not be able to solve Europe's demographic crisis, but they might be able to soften it. 
  

The report finishes with a number of recommendations, including: 

"European citizens when intending to take up employment in another Member State should not be seen differently according to the country they come from. Transitional arrangements should not be maintained because they create an artificial separation between 'old' and 'new' Europeans and lead to mistrust and prejudices on both sides. The Member States should make people aware of the fact that in the European Union everyone has the right to move freely. To this end, the European Year of Workers’ Mobility provides a favourable framework and helps people to learn more about the  possibilities of long or short-distance migration."

Austrian finance minister Karl-Heinz Grasser insisted not to lift the restrictions imposed on the free movement of labour from the new member states. He said that with low unemployment, Austria still considers itself at risk from neighbouring countries which he says have much lower wages.