Making Migration Work - Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het ...

intra-eu labour mobility after eastern enlargement and during the crisis:main trends and controversies87the crisis: labour market access and the extent to which a receiving country washit by the crisis (labour demand).When looking at smaller eu15 economies, we see considerable differentiationin the extent to which their labour markets absorbed eu10 migrants. The Netherlandshad a very favourable labour market situation at the time of the 2004accession, with one of the lowest unemployment rates in Europe, and it wasalso not particularly hard hit by the crisis. Moreover, it lifted transitionalmeasures for eu8 citizens relatively early. Even if both eu8 and eu2 migrationstocks in the Netherlands doubled between 2008 and 2011 to 31,300 and 9800respectively, it only received a fraction of the eu8 and eu2 migrants that wentto smaller countries such as Ireland, Austria, Greece and Belgium (see Figure5.3). The greater attractiveness of both Austria and Greece can be explainedat least in part by their geographic proximity to the accession countries, andIreland surely profited from opening its labour market immediately upon accessionand from language advantages. It is, however, hard to find any plausibleexplanation as to why the Netherlands was so little affected when, at the sametime, another Benelux country, Belgium, with much less favourable labourmarket conditions and longer application of transitional measures (until May2009 as compared to January 2007), saw much larger growth during the initialFigure 5.3:Impact of the crisis on stocks of eu10 nationals in eu15 countries, working-agepopulation (’000)10009008007006005004003002001000Source: European Labour Force Survey.LuxembourgDenmarkFinlandPortugalThe NetherlandsSwedenBelgiumFranceGreeceAustriaIrelandGermanyItalyukSpain20082011