While Germany is realising that its 'Green card' scheme is not doing enough to attract well-qualified workers from abroad, French Interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy has proposed, on 3 May 2006, a similar approach for his country.
Workers with good qualifications would be granted a three-year limited residence and work permit. At the same time, immigration for lower-qualified people would be made harder. Immigrants would have to learn French and take lessons on French society and values, and they would lose the right to a long-term residence permit, which up until now is granted after ten years stay in France.
France, like other EU countries, is competing with the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Switzerland when it comes to attracting highly-qualified workers and scientists on the global labour market.
Sarkozy quoted research according to which half of labour immigrants in Canada and the US are holding university degrees. In France, by contrast, most immigrants have not finished their secondary education. In a recent policy brief, Jacob von Weizsäcker of Bruegel recommended that France should adopt a points-based immigration scheme like the two North-American countries, in order to do better in what he calls "the global competition for talent".
The Commission recommended, in 2003, for member states to adopt immigration policies including incentives to bridge the qualification gap in immigration. However, faced with high unemployment, governments have difficulties explaining the necessity of fostering immigration of workers in high-qualification sectors like ICT and science, as well as in some notoriously understaffed sectors, like catering.
