Labour market performance and migration flows - European ...

European CommissionOccasional Paper 60, Volume I2004 to facilitate the legal entry of Egyptian migrant workers – see Roman 2008. However, anassessment of the working and impact of these schemes has not yet been carried out, and administrativeprocedures seem to be a permanent hurdle for their success. In May 2007, the European Commissionpublished a Communication on “Circular Migration and Mobility Partnerships between the EuropeanUnion and Third Countries” (COM(2007)248final) which advocated the “incentives encouraging thereturn of seasonal or temporary migrants and favouring the truly circular character of migration”. Thisopened up the possibility of backing circular and temporary migration schemes at EU level.In any case, the number of legal migrants from AMCs recruited through them remains marginal incomparison with the total volume of migration from AMCs to the EU (see Fargues 2009, p. 21).Venturini (2008) and the Thematic Background Paper on EU Migration Policy (Venturini, Fakhoury andJouant 2009) show that the migratory potential due to the mismatch between supply and demand oflabour in AMCs is too large to be solved by repeated migrations. Using a stock-flow model, it calculates(see Table 4.2.2) the absolute excess yearly supply of labour (AES) in a country as the differencebetween flow supply (FS, first-time entries into the labour force, determined by working age populationand participation rates; compare with data in the first row of Table 1.3.1) and flow demand (addingtogether replacement demand – RD, exits from the labour force – and additional demand, AD, additionaljobs created by the national economy) and subtracting the traditional level of (permanent) annualemigration outflows (M). In AMCs, this absolute excess supply of labour is too large to be solvedthrough repeated emigration. This would, for example, mean that each year in Morocco 128,000 and inEgypt 72,000 workers would leave temporarily to work abroad, and if economic conditions remain thesame, the following year the same people would leave temporarily for a second year abroad and the newentrants for the first time with a total of 252,000 for Morocco and 144,000 for Egypt and so on. For thefour AMCs considered in the model, this would mean close to half a million additional candidates forcircular migration each year.Table 4.2.2 Absolute excess supply of labour in AMCsYearAnnual Labour Market Flows1 2 3 4=2+3 5=1-4 6 7=5-6FSFlowSupplyRDReplacementDemandADAdditionaldemandTotalFlowDemandInternalExcessSupplyMEmigrationoutflowsAESAbsoluteExcessSupplyTunisia 2005 113,000 35,000 48,000 83,000 30,000 4,113/9,000 26,000/21,000Morocco 2006 310,000 92,000 30,000 122,000 188,000 60,000 128,000Egypt 2006 938,000 150,000 624,000 774,000 164,000 92,811 72,000Algeria 2005 357,000 37,000 12,000 49,000 308,000 42,000 266,000Population data, Labour force data, Exit data: ILO statistics.Additional demand CARIM dataMigration data CARIM Report 2006-7Source: Venturini, 2008.Spain, for a daily gross wage of 35 euros. (See Moreno 2009). In 2009, due to the crisis, the programme will be discontinued, and only Eastern European workers and Spanish unemployedwill be recruited.22 The agreement between both governments in 2008 in force on July 1st 2009 provides for 9,000 multiple entry visas a year for highly skilled potential migrants (3,500 for potentialemployees, 2,500 for “seasonal workers”, in particular in agriculture, and 1,500 each for “talents and skills” and for “young professionals”).64