Policy recommendations

  • To address the internal push factors for migration, the EU should provide adequate assistance to developing countries and achieve the target of 0.7% of GDP for development cooperation. It should help developing countries to devise effective strategies to retain highly skilled workers, e.g. through development programmes aimed at improving local employment opportunities and working conditions. This is especially necessary in the health sector.
  • The EU should provide targeted investments to train, deploy and retain staff in developing countries who are working in sensitive sectors such as education and health. The EU should also provide long-term budgetary support to underpin the domestic financing of those sectors.
  • The EU should ensure that all its member states sign a legally binding commitment that includes the private sector in order to prevent active recruitment in developing countries. Such a code of practice should address country- or region-specific needs. Furthermore, in order to ensure compliance, the EU should set up a formally constituted body with an oversight and watchdog role in the EU and developing countries.
  • To prevent a negative impact on source countries, the EU should introduce concrete measures to encourage the permanent return of Blue Card holders. Within the EU the portability of social rights should be facilitated. In developing countries, migrants should be offered benefits in order to encourage their return.
  • If the EU attracts workers whose education and training have been provided by their home countries, then these countries of origin should be appropriately compensated for having provided these skills. 
  • The EU should encourage its member states to strengthen their own (national) workforce policies in all sectors in order to become less dependent on foreign workers from less developed countries.

Case: Blue Card

01-04-2010 MEP Joly concerned about Migration

The EU recognizes migration as one of the nine prime areas to act in order to combat poverty. It is also one of the five priorities to tackle when it comes to Policy Coherence for Development. Despite this promised focus, illegal migration and brain-drain are usually the subjects of efforts. We praise Eva Joly (Greens/EFA) for seeing the bigger picture and looking beyond brain-drain for problems in this area.

Joly asks what the Commission intends to do to help ACP countries deal with the increase in migration of people from rural to urban areas. Young people are migrating away from rural areas because they can no longer sustain themselves with farming. The agricultural sector needs more support. The agricultural sector still makes up 60-85% of the population (Jolys sources) and all those farmers have a right to a decent living. Therefore more support is needed for this sector, and more attention is needed for this type of migration.

Joly is recognized as a fair politician because she sees a wider picture when it comes to migration and the problems that need to be tackled and therefore contributes to making the EU development and migration policy more coherent.

Monitor fair: Greens/EFA

 

Parliamentary Question
29 March 2010
19th JPA Session
Question by Eva Joly (Greens/EFA) to the Commission

Subject: Tackling migration and supporting small scale farming
Beyond the brain-drain that is usually the subject of efforts to tackle migration, the migration of inhabitants of rural areas is particularly acute in west Africa. One of the main reasons behind this is that young people in rural areas cannot live from farming.

Given the lack of emphasis on agriculture in the National Indicative Programmes funded by the European Development Fund, how does the new Commission intend to encourage employment, thereby enabling small-scale farmers in Africa (who still make up between 60-85% of the population) to make a decent living from agriculture in their countries?