By Rumy Vakarelska
On 28 November, David Cameron, our UK prime minister, has finally delivered his anti-EU immigration autumn political statement, raising more questions about the future of the UK in the EU and about the possible aftermath of his particular anti-Eastern European statements, dividing EU citizens in the UK into different groups. Cameron hardly mentioned the remaining 160,000 a year non-EU immigrants of all 260, 000 quoted last week by the Home Office and their impact on UK society or considered that many EU citizens in Britain have the right to vote in UK’s general elections, meaning a loss of votes for his Party.
Many of Mr Cameron’s short-term political statements have been picked up in haste by the UK tabloid press, while politicians across Europe were pleased that he had not gone as far as expected in his proposed anti-EU immigration measures or in the use of language in his speech. Essentially, Mr Cameron did not propose imposing caps on migrant numbers or restricting the issue of national insurance numbers, allowing EU citizens to work legally in the UK.
He has, though, made controversial announcements about restricting in-work benefits or tax credit benefits for new EU migrants to the UK, not removing those for citizens from across the EU, who had those for years without the new four-year restrictions to new EU migrants. These measures will not replace the need for immigration reform, which is a Europe-wide issue, especially when EU budgets are tight and the EU’s common borders cannot cope with the influx of illegal refugees from outside the EU. This is a task that Bulgaria fights on behalf of the EU as a non-Schengen country dealing with numbers of refugees from war-stricken places such as Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East that are considerable for a country its size.
Cameron’s speech has provoked a widespread negative reaction across the EU, as well as a reaction from various EU citizens’ organisations in the UK, including the Polish City Club and the Europeans Party in the UK, whose President, Dr. Tommy Tomescu, wrote a sharp letter to the Guardian.
Observers close to the pre-election statement know that the statement does not respond to the real problems David Cameron has to fix, which are mainly a result of the centuries-old class divisions in UK society aggravated by the inevitable and temporary events of globalisation and mass migration, expected by social scientists to continue to 2050, but not beyond.
Social mobility in the UK had over the last five years decreased, but not obligatory because of the arrival of well-educated EU migrants, whereby this is a trend across Europe. The Office of National Statistics (ONS) has confirmed that some 80pc of the Bulgarians and Romanians in the UK alone work and this is what matters compared to just over 70 pc of the UK-born population.
The biggest problem in Cameron’s speech was his contribution to provoking a bad image of anyone born in Europe, especially in Eastern Europe. Also, the lack of recognition of EU citizens in the UK as the same group of people, who made the anti-communist revolutions happen beyond the Berlin Wall 25 years ago. This was an anniversary which the UK, together with the rest of the world, marked only three weeks ago.
A French woman living in the UK, interviewed on the BBC, noted that this new EU migrant image ‘smoke screen’ is not fare and does not help.
Underestimating the possibilities of synergies for the UK with the CEE countries that Tony Blair had spotted before and after 2004, when free movement in the EU allowed citizens from the new EU countries to come to the UK and many British businesses to flourish in the region, represents today an unhelpful understatement.
But, one thing that David Cameron is really wrong about is the motivation for people from CEE countries to come to the UK. This is not obligatory the economy, but the country’s well-functioning society.
The Open Europe think-tank’s most recent analysis on CEE migrants’ basic salaries, which Mr Cameron referred to in his speech, was at large ill-founded, as new EU migrants’ income in their home countries compared to their income in the UK did not include their home ownership in their native countries or in the UK. It also did not mention the financial benefits of close extended family ties that may result in joint and much higher income and spending budgets. The differences in the exchange rate with their home countries or the cost of living, and the contribution of their native-countries education, skills and entrepreneurship to the UK economy and society were also not included in the calculations. Open Europe did not provide an answer to this enquiry.
Ironically, on that very Friday, UK media were equally dominated by the ‘Black Friday’ sales rush, matching a US model to boost retail sales, which the UK has adopted two years ago. Many of these goods are not any more made in the UK or the EU and one would have thought that the focus of Cameron’s speech might have been on the knowledge economy, including how much the UK may have benefited from CEE’s best experts in the UK, many of whom used to emigrate to the US and who appear to still have concerns about settling in the UK if they have not done so long ago. This is still due to the high level of prejudice that such political statements install in the public psyche and in the workplace, so Mr. Cameron is right to think that UK is not always attracting the best of the EU’s highly skilled generation.
Bulgarian Foreign Minister Daniel Mitov has had a telephone conversation with David Liddington, UK Europe Minister, saying that Bulgaria supports the EC’s principles of free movement, will collaborate to curb any abuse of the UK benefit system, but also that some of David Cameron’s suggestions oppose the equal rights of EU citizens to free movement.
As many Bulgarian citizen organisations have noted now and before, the Bulgarian government needs to take a more specific and sharp position in response to the UK’s proposed measures outside ‘the wait and see’ take that relies equally on the EC’s response.
In the medium-term, the UK has to adopt a different language towards EU citizens within its borders, especially those from Eastern Europe. The day before Mr Cameron’s anti-EU immigration speech, whose tone was softened under the German Chancellor Angela Merkel influence, the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) announced its intent to co-operate with Bulgaria and Estonia when uniquely for the first time in 2017 and 2018 the three countries will hold for six months one after the other the EU’s presidency.
Last week, the British Ambassador to Bulgaria, Jonathan Allen, has held a forum in Sofia to look for a common ground for this presidency, also including the Bulgarian Vice-Premier Meglena Kuneva, Radka Balabanova, an EU expert at the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry, Tim Higgins, an EU expert from the FCO and Vessela Cherneva, a senior analyst at the ECFR in Bulgaria.
Cherneva had so far best formulated Bulgaria’s interests in relation to migration, also representing the interests of Bulgarians abroad. According to the high profile forum, economic growth, job creation, the EUs single digital economy and an EU-wide support for TTIP (the Transatlantic Trade International Partnership), the EU’s long planned trade partnership with US, will remain a common priority among the three countries, regardless of the outcome of UK’s general elections in 2015. Copyrigh@Rumy Vakarelska 2014
Team New Europe produces original journalistic content and provides editorial and public affairs advice. To sponsor the English language content in www.Budilnik.com or get expert coverage, contact the author:rumy.vakarelska@gmail.com
