The work permit scheme is an attempt to give Europe a legal identity, says daniel hannan |
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With all the parties suddenly coming up with new immigration schemes, it's worth looking at one which has so far escaped comment. Last week, the EU's Home Affairs Commissioner, Franco Frattini, announced an EU-wide work permit scheme, a kind of pan-European green card, called the 'blue card'.
Whenever the EU suggests a new policy, one has to ask: 'To what problem is this a solution?' Is there a practical need for action at European level, or is Brussels pursuing integration for its own sake?
In this case there is little doubt. Employers don't need EU permission to import labour. They're doing it now. London alone is home to nearly a million foreign nationals, many of them working in banking, education and IT.
Fair enough: there is a labour shortage in southern England, and London would lose its position as the world's financial capital if it
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Employers don’t need EU permission to import labour. They’re doing it now |
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could not suck in workers. But not every EU country is in the same position. Some have high unemployment rates. Some are overcrowded, while others are suffering from collapsing birth rates.
In truth, the blue card is about something else entirely. Euro-integrationists, keen as ever on giving the EU the attributes of statehood, want to dismantle what they call the EU's 'internal' frontiers while erecting a single 'external' frontier around it.
Despite what is claimed, the demand for the blue card has not come from business. To be precise, it has come from a couple of Commission-funded lobby groups that purport to speak for business. (This is often how the EU operates - funding organisations that then tell it what it wants to hear.)
Their true purpose is to complete what Euro-federalists call the 'Area of Freedom, Security and Justice': a single juridical space across the EU. That's their privilege, of course. But it would be nice if, for once, they came clean about their motives.
FIRST POSTED NOVEMBER 1, 2007
Daniel Hannan is the Conservative MEP for Southeast England |
Don't mention the war, David
In demographics, there are no free lunches
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