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Free movement of workers

Does the free movement of workers across borders assure peace and prosperity?

The panellist in this discussion is:

Roland Rudd
Chairman, Business for New Europe

Roland Rudd is the Chairman of Business for New Europe, which launched in March 2006 to support the UK’s active engagement in Europe. BNE is an independent coalition of business leaders articulating a positive case for European reform. He is also the Senior Partner of Finsbury Ltd.

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The free movement of workers

Posted by Michael Leyland on 31/01/2007 - 19:52

Hello everybody! I would first of all like to thank Roland Rudd for his opening comments as well as those subsequently made by Levitca and Teddy. My name is Mike and I will be the moderator for this particular topic.

I certainly agree that the current trend for national newspapers to take the stance that ‘they come over here, they take our jobs and steal our women’ tends to ignore the positive impact which this free movement of labour has had on many European countries. However, I would like to question whether this free movement of workers does in fact ‘assure peace’ when negative comments by the media appear, if anything, to create more conflict.

Whilst I would be the first to admit that the economic aspect of this topic is not my strongest point, I hope that through comments such as that made by Teddy I will able to learn a bit more about this side of the debate. I think one thing which Teddy’s post does raise is the question of management and whether or not this movement of labour should be completely free or whether this freedom needs to be managed, ensuring all of the economies across the European Union, and not simply the larger nations, benefit from this movement.

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