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Chapter 3
The economic crisis
in the EU: impact
on health workforce
mobility
Gilles Dussault and James Buchan
3.1 Introduction
Economic conditions rank high in the list of factors that influence the mobility
of health professionals. Studies of mobility flows in the EU and elsewhere tend
to show that health professionals move from poorer to richer environments.
This is the case in times of economic stability, but is it also the case in times
of economic crisis when the conditions in traditional destination countries
are also difficult? The PROMeTHEUS project was commissioned in advance
of the global financial crisis that first hit in 2007–2008 and which continues
to be a dominant feature of the policy and labour market context across EU
Member States. This chapter gives consideration to the ways in which the
crisis has manifested itself in the health sector, with a specific focus on health
workforce mobility. The chapter sets the economic context of expenditure on
health systems, reports on how EU Member States have responded to the crisis
as it has impacted on health system funding, considers evidence on changes
in mobility drivers and trends, and looks at the consequences, now and in the
future, for health professionals and EU health systems.
Developing an accurate country perspective or regional overview of the impact
of the crisis on health workforce mobility is complex for various reasons. First,
aggregation of, often incomplete, national or regional data takes time, and
some effects will become “visible” to data analysis only after the event. Second,
there are important variations in how the crisis has affected specific countries