Migration of Highly Qualified Workers and Policies to Ensure Labour Market Sustainability in the European Union in 2013-2014

Abstract

European Union is facing challenges of ageing societies and changes in structure of economy, thus labour shortages turn into an urgent issue that ultimately affects labour market sustainability. In its attempt to recruit highly qualified workers EU has strong international competitors, e.g. USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and pursues a variety of initiatives at national level of the Member States and at the EU level in general. This article aims at assessing the EU policies related to migration of highly qualified workers. Statistical data analysis has revealed that labour mobility is increasing in EU. Thus the EU Mobility directive could be evaluated as bringing benefits, yet with a room for improvement, because highly qualified workers still make up just a small part in all the mobile citizens’ population. National initiatives are more effective in fostering the migration of highly qualified workers, but this has the threat of unequal benefits in different EU regions; the effectiveness of EU Blue Card initiative is weak but with a high potential, thus it needs further improvements in its issuing policies.