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Germany softens its labor stance

Agrees to open market to engineers from new EU member states

By Victor Velek
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
August 29th, 2007 issue

Engineers from the Czech Republic, along with their counterparts from the other 11 new European Union countries, will no longer face restrictions when seeking jobs in Germany, thanks to a new agreement reached by the country’s government.
Germany hopes the move, announced by Chancellor Angela Merkel Aug. 24, will help solve its chronic shortage of skilled workers. It represents the first softening of the German labor market to workers from the new EU states; the market had previously been strictly protected.
“[The measure will] strengthen Germany as a business and industrial location,” said Annette Schavan, the German minister for education and research, after a two-day meeting of the country’s leaders.
“We see it as a step in the right direction,” said Štěpán Černoušek, spokesman for the Czech Labor and Social Affairs Ministry. “However, this measure is unsatisfactory because it opens up only a tiny part of the German labor market.”
Germany plans to keep tight restrictions on the rest of its labor market, as it has since the Czech Republic, Poland and eight others joined the EU in 2004. In contrast, other EU countries, such as the United Kingdom and Ireland, have opened their markets in moves that were largely judged to boost their economies.
Any opening by Germany is more important than if it were another EU country, said Jan Prokš, deputy chair of the Czech and Moravian Electrical and Electronic Association.
“The German labor market is different from the Irish labor market,” he said. “Due to its proximity, it might be more attractive.”
While acknowledging the announcement is positive news for the country, it could mean that the domestic engineering force will lose workers when it “is already short of a skilled labor force,” he said.
Mechanical engineering is seeing similar shortages, said Daniel Hanus, head of the Association of Mechanical Engineers.
 To overcome the shortage, Hanus would like to see the Czech Republic open up selected sectors of its job market to non-EU members such as Ukraine and Russia.
Both Prokš and Hanus say it’s too difficult to project how many engineers will actually swap the Czech Republic for Germany when restrictions are lifted this fall.
Michael Schwartz, spokesman for the German Association of Engineers, does not expect a huge influx of engineers to enter the country, simply because there aren’t enough engineers to leave the new member states.
“There aren’t enough qualified engineers in the whole of Europe, not only in Germany,” he said. “It’s unlikely that an above-average number of engineers from East European states will take the opportunity to work in Germany.”
— Michael Heitmann contributed reporting to this report.

Victor Velek can be reached at vvelek@praguepost.com


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