The Wall Street Journal, 06./07./08.06.2008, Nr. 88, S. 28
MUNICH—Germany and other euro-zone nations are losing out in the international competition for skilled labor, jeopardizing their countries' future economic potential, according to economists and businesspeople meeting in this southern German city.
Europe is in a phase of massive cross-border migration that has few precedents, participants in the Munich Economic Summit, a high-level annual economics Conference, heard on Thursday.
As countries such as the U.K. benefit from the immigration waves Sparked by the European Union's expansion into Eastern Europe, others, such as Germany, are missing their Chance to attract better-educated workers, said Hans-Werner Sinn, President of the Munich-based tfo economics institute.
Germany, France and Italy - the major economies of the euro currency zone—are attracting mainly low-skilled immigrants, while the U.K.,Ireland and Spain have been luring a higher Proportion of workers with higher education, Prof. Sinn said. For example, 45% of Ireland's foreign-born residents and 34% of Britain's have a College degree, compared with only 19 in Germany and 11 in Italy, according to Prof. Sinn.
The discussion comes as many European companies say shortages of highly skilled workers are hampering their growth, limiting the Continent's ability to develop new industries as its traditional manufacturing base declines.
Germany needs more university-educated people in its work force if it is to succeed as a knowledge-based economy, said Roland Berger, head of the Munich-based management consultancy that bears his name.
The U.K. and Ireland allowed workers from Central and Eastern Europe to migrate freely from the moment their countries joined the EU in 2004. But Germany and many other nations took advantage of a right to exclude workers from the new member states for as many as seven years, because of worries that new arrivals would take Jobs away from local workers. Spain dropped its restrictions in 2006.
Even France, where fears about Job competition were personified by the specter of the "Polish plumber," who supposedly threatened to undercut his French counterparts with rock-bottom wages, has changed its tune. In a visit to Warsaw last week, President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that France would drop its restrictions on migrant workers from Poland and most other new EU member states by July.
That's left Germany increasingly isolated in its tough stance on immigration. Although Berlin policy makers last year cracked a door open for some highly specialized workers, such as engineers - German companies were complaining that they couldn't find enough people at home - participants at the Conference here said the country still has far to go.
"The highly skilled people needed by the German economy cannot be found among the still-too-many unemployed people inside the country," said Jürgen Chrobog, chairman of the BMW Foundation, which is co-hosting the meeting with the ifo institute.
The waves of migration since the EU enlargement in 2004 are on a scale comparable to the migration of peoples that transformed Europe from the fourth Century A.D. onward, ifo's Mr. Sinn said. More than 800,000 workers from Eastern Europe, including more than 500,000 Poles, have registered in the U.K. in the past four years, according to the British government.
Prof. Sinn said there have been other large migrations, measuring by the tens of thousands, of Romanians to Italy and Spain, of Bulgarians to Italy and Turkey, and even of Poles to Germany - despite the heavy restrictions on German-based companies employing Poles.
But French economist Gilles Saint- Paul of Toulouse University said that migrants' level of education and skills mattered more to the recipient countries' economic fortunes than the raw numbers. In the race for highly educated workers, he said, Europe as a whole is losing out to the U.S.
Citing U.S. Census data on education and income, he said a disproportionate number of European immigrants in the U.S. were among the brightest prospects in their fields, including entrepreneurs and scientific researchers.
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