Category Archives: Western and Central Europe

Spain’s Immigration

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As Spanish commenter Pepe would probably say, ‘hot labour’ is moving into Spain at a nifty clip: 2% of the total population per annum. In 2004 the number increased by 700,000. Last year, although we don’t have the numbers yet there was probably the same number or more. Here is a story from El Pais which was linked-to in the IHT based on this press release (in Spanish). Note that these numbers are for 1 January 2005, we still have to add 2006.

The number of immigrants in Spain rose last year to the equivalent of 8.5 percent of the total population as of January 1, 2005, according to figures released on Tuesday by the National Statistics Institute (INE). Of the total 44.1 million people registered as residents, 3.7 million were non-Spanish. The total population rose 2.1 percent from the year-earlier figure, while the number of immigrants rose 23 percent from the figures released on January 1, 2004.

The regions that registered the largest rise in population were Catalonia, Andalusia, Madrid and Valencia, largely due to immigration. Only in the North African enclave of Melilla did the population decrease, the INE said.

The largest immigrant group hails from Ecuador with 475,698 residents, followed by Morocco with 420,556, Colombia with 248,894, Romania with 207,960 and Britain with 174,810.

For towns with more than 10,000 inhabitants, Rojales in Alicante boasts the largest percentage of foreign-born residents. Of the total population of 13,807, 65.3 percent are immigrants, the INE said. Rojales, about 35 kilometers from Alicante, is a popular spot for British citizens to buy vacation and retirement homes.

In November, the Center for Sociological Research (CIS) released a survey showing that three out of every five Spaniards responded that there are too many immigrants in Spain. Immigration also was shown to be the second-most important problem for Spaniards (40 percent) after unemployment (54.1 percent) and ahead of terrorism (25.3 percent).

Nevertheless, the same survey showed that nearly 61 percent of Spaniards feel immigrants should have the right to vote in local elections, while 53.4 percent would extend that right to national elections.

France and Globalisation

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Consultants KPMG and French employers’ group Medef have just published a survey on attitudes to globalisation and outsourcing. Interestingly a higher percentage of employers than previously said they saw no benefit in moving jobs to countries with cheaper labour markets (56% compared with 29% last year), while 74 per cent said broader foreign investment had helped safeguard jobs in France. Is this an example of ‘double entendre’? Is it a real reflection of attitudes to globalisation, or a ‘packaging’ exercise where it is easier to advocate something as ‘new investment’ rather than ‘moving jobs’. At the same time the FT says,

But for those SMEs with a low turnover, or which lacked innovation, the lower-cost economies were still seen as a danger.There is a growing gulf between the strategies of such companies and larger or more innovative rivals, the report said.

Italian Pension Reform

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The Italian government finally agreed the details of the new penison reform yesterday. Curiously, it does not need to go to parliament for approval. Getting government agreement had not been without difficulty, and again interestingly enough it won’t come into effect for two years, giving next year’s incoming government plenty of time to change its mind.

The reform aims to launch a second pillar of private and occupational schemes to flank state pensions, using money which companies currently hold on behalf of their workers in a fund which employees receive when they leave their job. It will come into force at the same time as a reform of the state pension system which raises the retirement age to 60 from 57. Both measures could be changed or scrapped between now and 2008 by whoever wins the 2006 general election.

Signs Of The Times

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Well, for once some news is good news. Also, it seems to confirm what I always suspected: people and cultures do change, they do ‘move on’, even if sometimes it seems they do so impossibly slowly.

Change in Northern Ireland may be so slow it appears imperceptible, but the writing is on the wall for one of the most negative of its cultural traditions — murals glorifying paramilitary violence. Often covering entire side walls of buildings, they are a common sight in working class areas of large towns, acting as a territorial marker, badge of victory or mark of sorrow in a country still deeply divided along religious and national lines.

However, with the Irish Republican Army pledging to end its armed campaign against British rule and some paramilitary groups loyal to Britain also committing to end violence, the menacing paintings that for decades symbolized the province’s conflict are slowly being replaced.

Where once masked gunmen and shadowy assassins loomed from building walls, pictures of sports stars, authors and landscapes are beginning to spring up — most recently in pro-British “unionist” or “loyalist” areas where armed groups are starting to stand down…..

A portrait of Belfast-born writer C.S. Lewis, author of the Narnia stories, now graces a wall in east Belfast, a pro-British area, as does a painting of George Best, Northern Ireland’s favorite soccer-playing son.

The French Unrest and the Labour Market

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Morgan Stanley’s Eric Chaney has what I consider to be a very sensitive and perceptive analysis of the economic backdrop to the French urban unrest:

Turning to economic causes, many analysts have pointed to mass youth unemployment as the main cause of the political unrest in low-income suburbs. The numbers are striking: the French unemployment rate reached 21.3% in the 15-24 age bracket in 2004, vs. 13.4% for the OECD as a whole. However, the headline unemployment rate is misleading because, at the same time, the participation rate of the 15-24 age group is particularly low in France: 37.5%, vs. 49.9% in the OECD. Practically, this means that 7.8% of the population aged between 15 and 24 is unemployed in France, vs. 6.5% in the OECD. The difference is not that large. What makes France different from other countries is the very low participation rate of young people, not particularly massive unemployment. In other words, the young in France take fewer jobs than their counterparts in other developed countries……”

“That brings us to a more fundamental point: why is it so difficult to create jobs in France? I have discussed this point in a previous note (“Making France Work”, June 21, 2005). In my view, the causes of the job disease fit reasonably well with the “insider-outsider” model developed by labor economists, provided that it is extended to products and services markets. I will elaborate only on labor market issues, starting with the minimum wage, which I believe is the major hurdle to job creation for young and less skilled workers. However, highly regulated product and services markets, which allow various interest groups to keep markets closed to competition and thus reduce employment opportunities, are another important cause of the job disease……….”

“Originally, the minimum wage was introduced as a protection against excessive employers’ bargaining power (“monopsomy” cases). Over the years, it became a protection against competition from cheap labour. Many studies on French data have shown that a rise in the minimum wage is very negative for employment. Although estimates may differ, they converge qualitatively. For instance, Bernard Salanié (Columbia University) and Guy Laroque (CREST) estimated that a 1% rise in the minimum wage could cost 29,000 jobs (“Une décomposition du non-emploi en France”, Economie et Statistique N331, 2000-1). As a consequence, each minimum wage rise, often seen as a “social measure” in French media, would increase the proportion of people living only on social benefits. This point is particularly important for young and low qualified workers, whose parents are often also unqualified: they suffered twice from the generous increases in the minimum wage in terms of fewer job opportunities for them and their parents and, thus, a lower income for their household.

Bigotry in Central Europe

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Here’s a post form Reflections on European Democracy that I’ve been meaning to link to for a while.

What I am saying is that the rants of people like Kaczyński, Marcinkiewicz, Lepper, and others against communists and gays are nothing new. They form a direct line with the authoritarian independent pre-war republics and with the communist regimes. The Soviets hated “deviance” of any kind, be it Jewish, gay, handicapped or dissident, because their mere existence spoiled the official myth of (socialist) perfection. Pre-war nationalists and their present ideological heirs hate it for the very same reason.

Buried lead?

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Saturday over at European Tribune says:

In the past few days, everyone talked about Franz Müntefering’s resignation as SPD chairman. I did, too. That is why I nearly missed one of the most important news in German politics for months (or maybe even years):

SPD and CDU/CSU have agreed on the most contentious points of federal reform. Federal reform will be the first big reform project of the coming grand coalition.

Prodi vs Belusconi

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It now seems to be more or less official: after Romano Prodi won a convincing 75 percent support among centre-left voters in what were effectively the first American-style primaries in Italian history, and Marco Follini resigned as leader of the Union of Christian Democrats (UDC) after a failed attempt to persuade his coalition colleagues that Berlusconi should not be their candidate for premier, the stage now looks set for a Berlusconi-Prodi showdown in next years Italian elections.

African Migrants ‘Dumped’ In The Desert

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The scandal of recent days surrounding the ‘policing’ of the EU’s southern frontier in Ceuta and Melilla continues. Yesterday Spanish TV was full of images and reports from a group of 500 or so Africans who were bused and dumped in the desert hundreds of kilometres from reasonable sources of food ands water. The EU observer also reports on a “technical mission” of EU officials who flew to Melilla and Ceuta over the weekend “to investigate illegal immigration patterns” and evaluate the gravity of last week’s clashes, which left a minimum of 10 migrants dead.

A commission spokesman the same day reiterated that pressure is being put on Morocco to re-admit Sub-Saharan immigrants.

But Brussels’ comment came just as Medecins sans Frontieres announced that over 500 mostly Sub-Saharan immigrants had been found “in bad shape” in the desert area of Auoina-Souatar near the Morocco-Algerian border, with the NGO claiming that they had been abandoned there by the Moroccan authorities.

Volunteers of another international NGO, SOS Racisme, said 24 immigrants, out of which many had previously applied for asylum in Spain, had died of thirst in similar circumstances.

On top of this, Javier Sancho of Medecins sans Frontieres told EUobserver that several of the immigrants had “injuries of the kind that are inflicted by sticks or hits, or by the rubber batons used by Spanish border police”.