The EU Is a
Dishonest Broker on Western Balkan Demographics
The Western Balkans’
brain drain and EU accession are mutually exclusive. If accession is a serious
goal, the EU must take responsibility as the key beneficiary of that brain
drain and share the burden of finding a solution.
·
March 11, 2021
The fight against brain drain in the Western Balkans
is Europe’s war on drugs—that decades-long, largely ineffective U.S. campaign
aimed at eradicating narcotics production and smuggling from Latin America.
Yet, there was little consideration of the other half of the equation: the
spiraling domestic demand for drugs in the United States.
Allison Carragher is a
visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe, where she specializes in economic engagement
in the Western Balkans and countries of the former Yugoslavia.
The EU is similarly addicted to labor imported from
the Western Balkans but is engaged in a half-hearted effort that focuses solely
on factors emanating from the region itself.
The Western Balkans, like Eastern Europe before them,
have been depopulated by war, guest-worker programs, and now brain drain. The
World Bank estimates that 4.4 million people emigrated
from the region between 1990 and 2015. To put it in
perspective, this figure includes nearly one-third of the populations of
Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
About half the region’s emigrants move to Western
Europe, as economic powerhouses like Germany attempt to right their inverted
population pyramids. With some 1.3 million vacant jobs and an aging populace,
Germany in 2020 introduced a skilled immigration act that eases labor market
access for non-EU citizens. The preconditions of German language skills and
equivalence of qualifications favor Western Balkan workers, whose home
economies already tilt toward Germany.
Migration is a product of push and pull factors. Yet,
even during Germany’s EU Council presidency in the second half of 2020, demographic conferences on
the Western Balkans emphasized only the push factors that spur migration: bleak
economic prospects, corruption, and organized crime. While these are legitimate
issues, this perspective puts the onus exclusively on the region to solve the
problems. There is little recognition of the pull factors and no acknowledgment
of the vast benefits the EU reaps from brain drain.
Labor outflows represent big money. Economist Federico
Fubini estimates that Eastern European and Western Balkan countries injected over €200 billion ($238
billion) into the German economy via education and training of young workers
who moved there between 2009 and 2017.
Furthermore, Western Balkan workers often migrate for
jobs below their qualification level, which still pay better than advanced
positions back home. This underuse of skills and education represents a net
efficiency loss. As Romanian European parliamentarian Clotilde Armand
explained, “this exodus is a de facto transfer of wealth”
from East to West.
Senior European officials like Friedrich Merz, who
yearns to succeed German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have warned against the
EU becoming a “transfer union” of
rich member states subsidizing less wealthy peers. But add brain drain to the
profits that Western European companies make doing business in the East, and
these East–West wealth transfers far
outstrip EU funds traveling in the opposite direction.
Until Western Europe acknowledges its key role as both
a destination for and a beneficiary of brain drain, the EU cannot be considered
an honest broker on Western Balkan demographics.
Brain drain decimates labor markets and has serious
economic consequences. The shortage of qualified workers stunts growth and
discourages foreign investment. Particularly relevant in the coronavirus era is
the lack of qualified health
workers in the Western Balkans, who are instead saving lives in
Western Europe. Given that the region has some of the world’s lowest fertility rates and
little immigration, growing pension costs are borne by a shrinking tax base.
This either contributes to rising government deficits or reduces beneficial
public spending.
Brain drain also has political repercussions. Western
Balkan emigrants are on average younger and more educated than citizens back
home and therefore tend to form a relatively liberal segment of the electorate.
Emigration thus alters a population’s political behavior and can empower poor
political leadership. When the most motivated and qualified citizens flee the
country, there are fewer high-quality individuals available to lead—or vote.
Such consequences are possible in all countries that
experience a loss of talent. What makes the Western Balkan case unique are the
implications for EU enlargement. Brain drain decelerates EU economic
convergence and the adoption of the fiscal criteria for membership. The
transfer of wealth offsets the EU’s pre-accession assistance. And the hollowing
out of the electorate reinforces a cycle of corruption and ineffective
leadership. In sum, unmitigated brain drain and EU accession are mutually
exclusive.
The solution is not to forbid emigration—even though a
surprising 2019 report by the European
Council on Foreign Relations found that majorities of citizens
in several EU countries would support just that. Such a policy would erode one
of the four fundamental freedoms that uphold the EU experiment: the free
movement of labor.
Instead, the EU should approach the issue as a true
partner. Rather than fighting an ineffective war on brain drain based on
half-truths, the union should develop policies that address both push and pull
factors, such as obliging labor-importing nations to compensate source
countries for the true cost of exporting talent.
A 2020 European Commission report on
the impact of demographic change identified a need “to embed demographic
considerations across EU policy” and “reduce the disparities between regions.”
Now is the time to deliver. An EU that is serious about accession must take
responsibility as the primary beneficiary of brain drain from the Western
Balkans and share the burden of finding a solution.
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