A part of the third article of the European Union Lisbon treaty says that Union `shall promote economic, social and territorial cohesion, and solidarity among Member States.‘ It is linked to the second article that one of the goal of the EU is `the well-being of its peoples.‘ As a tool to establish economic solidarity between all the Member States is the Cohesion Policy which is investments for less developed regions such as Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltic States in education, research and innovation in order to create jobs and reduce poverty so a level of economy in those regions gets closer to old members.
However, when the European Community was set in 1957, its main purpose was to establish an economic union and in 1970‘s a cultural integration was added to the agenda. As a consequence of further evolution of European politics working towards those two goals became European Parliament and Council Directive 2004/38/EC of 29 April 2004 on the right of citizens of the Union and their family members to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member States. But neither politicians nor citizens has ever thought that it may do severe damage to the Cohesion Policy.
What is a background for this idea? Migration. If you take a look at migration statistics (map 1) by the Statistical Office Of The European Communities (EUROSTAT), you can notice a trend of big migration from the poorer Member States in the eastern Europe towards the west and Scandinavia countries. These figures have a massive impact on total.
Map 1. Migration in Europe
Ironically, migration accelerates more migration. The majority of migrants are young and medium-aged people which are active in labor market. The national companies lose manpower and it means less income for states‘ budget. The goverment has no choice but to raise taxes or spare less money into social politics. Dissapointment of national institutions and a quality of life hits a society soa part of them chooses to emigrate and a cycle goes on…
So what can the European Union do to stop that and to ensure that the Cohesion Policy is efficient? Stopping a free movement of citizens is not an option because it would send European Union a few decades back and even contradicts itselfs idea. This is going to be one of the main economic, political and cultural task in the future.
