Germany to open job market for eastern Europe sooner than expected?

by kkaefer | July 26, 2007 at 11:41 am

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Despite the more than 3 million unemployed people living in Germany, it may be necessary to open the job market for labourers from Eastern Europe, the "new" members of the European Union. While there may still be quite some unemployment in Germany, the demand for skilled workers is considered higher than the supply.

Germany is set to consider relaxing or dropping labour barriers against job seekers from the new EU member states due to a rising number of vacancies impossible to fill by domestic workers.
Angela Merkel's cabinet will debate the issue in late August, but Gerd Andres from the labour ministry admitted, "If we continue to suffer from a labour shortage in Germany, we could consider lifting the limits on eastern European labour before 2009," according to the daily Hanoversche Allgemeine Zeitung.

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Germany and Austria have been the most reluctant of the "old" EU member states to open their labour markets to citizens from eight post-communist countries which joined the bloc in 2004 as well as to Romania and Bulgaria which entered this year.