Portugal’s employment state secretary, Fernando Medina, said that he will push for a "realistic" approach to immigration policy, when his country takes over the six-month EU Presidency next month.
Speaking on 5 June at the annual Employment Week event in Brussels, Medina said the EU needed to take a closer look at "the reality of economic migration" as thousands of illegal migrants from Africa press at the EU’s borders.
"Realistically, we have to approach the question of illegal migration connected to legal migration," Medina said. "I am talking about the reality of economic migration," he added, saying it makes up "the big bulk" of migration.
According to Medina, such a policy should be based on four pillars:
- A realistic approach to legal migration, which places the emphasis on economic migration. "If we try to be too restrictive on legal migration, this is not a realistic approach," the Portuguese state secretary said.
- Social inclusion policies, which address "how people work and live in the country" as well as their working conditions.
- An effective border policy, to control the influx of legal and illegal immigrants. "There is no use having a very tight immigration system if we don't have an effective border control system.'
- Development policy, namely co-operation with African countries that make up the bulk of economic migration to Europe, a problem Medina said will "obviously going to continue and to put pressure on our system".
Speaking at the conference, EU Employment Commissioner Vladimír Špidla announced new initiatives to tackle black-market employment, saying it is the best way to fight social dumping within Europe.
"This Autumn, we will launch an initiative against black-market labour in general, not only concerning immigrants from third countries, because black-market labour is the strongest cause of social dumping in Europe."
According to Špidla, black-market labour represented around 15% of all jobs available in the EU, a figure he described as "enormous". And immigrants are those who suffer the most from black-market jobs, he added, saying such practices are often close to "slavery".
"I have never seen regulatory conditions in member states that can be considered as social dumping," Špidla said in response to questions from a journalist, arguing that black market-labour was on the contrary "always" linked with social dumping.
