A.When Bulgarians and Romanians received the long-awaited rights of all EU citizens a decade and a half ago, fears in Germany were greater than joy in some places: Instead of skilled workers and tourists, poor and migrant workers were expected in some places. They would then live reasonably well here at the expense of the German social security system, while their compatriots in Bucharest or Sofia would have to get by with state support of forty or fifty euros. A new study commissioned by the “Media Service Integration” shows that some of these fears were unfounded, and argues that immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria enriched the labor market and filled the social coffers all in all.
By contrast, when full freedom of movement was granted in 2014, there was initially concern about “immigration to the social security system”. In fact, many thousands of women and men came looking to escape poverty at home with various unconventional income models. One of them was to apply for child benefit for a large number of children in Germany and to use this money to support themselves in Germany, but also for relatives in Romania or Bulgaria. Others hired themselves out as casual workers for extremely low wages for dirty work. On some arterial roads in German cities, real “work lines” arose, where desperate foreigners hoped for nefarious employers.
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Elsewhere, for example in Dortmund or in Berlin-Neukölln, it soon became noticeable that entire villages from Romania were relocating there, mostly from the Roma ethnic group. In order to stay and to get money from the state, many registered a trade. In Berlin-Neukölln alone, for example, there were more than 3,000 new registrations in one year; mainly for companies in the construction industry or for service providers who called themselves “public relations assistants”, meaning the distribution of slips of paper. The independence of one parent paved the way for the right to child benefit. The then District Councilor Franziska Giffey, now the Governing Mayor of Berlin, made a special trip to Romania in 2013 to find out more about the immigrants, who came almost exclusively from Roma families.
Sharp increase in the employment rate
Cities and municipalities groaned heavily under the burden of the new citizens. In already difficult parts of the city, living together became even more difficult. Action plans had to be found, special conferences and round tables had to meet. Then in 2015 came the great refugee movement from Syria and superimposed everything. Today, according to the study author Carsten Wolf, after 15 years of largely open borders, the balance sheet looks different from what was feared at the time. From his point of view, the initial immigration of poverty has become an enrichment for the labor market and the social systems.
In September 2021, around 460,000 people from Romania were working subject to social security contributions in Germany, from Bulgaria around 170,000, which is a threefold increase compared to 2014 alone Unemployment rate. Today it is nine percent, little more than the national average. “The contributions to the social system by the employees should clearly outweigh the costs, for example through unemployment,” writes Wolf.
The report quotes the labor market expert and migration researcher Herbert Brückner, who says: “As far as I know, no comparable increase in employment rates has been observed in any other population group in Germany, at least not in such a short period of time.” That was a great success of the introduction of the free movement of workers . Reference is also made to two aspects: there are now around 5,000 Romanian doctors working in German hospitals and practices, more than from any other EU country. In addition, many employees would probably go back to their home countries later, so as old people would not have to be looked after and cared for in Germany.
However, this is an assumption that has already been proven wrong with previous immigrant groups in Germany, such as immigrants from Turkey. The ongoing poverty challenge for Europe, which is also evident in the excluded Roma groups from Romania and Bulgaria, is not mentioned in the study. How many Roma contribute to the integration success of many immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria in Germany remains an interesting question for future studies.