Quotes of the Day

The tabloid headlines are lurid: FOUR MILLION IMMIGRANTS HEADING HERE predicts Britain's The People; GYPSY CRISIS warns the Daily Express. Keeping out foreigners has long been a neuralgic issue in European politics. But May 1, the date when 10 new, relatively poor countries join the E.U., is bringing a new intensity to dire warnings about a flood of low-paid workers from the East stealing jobs and benefits from the more prosperous West.

That image must come as cold, ironic comfort to 54 Greeks who did not exactly find Britain an employment paradise before they hurried home two weeks ago. Although they are already entitled to work with full legal protections anywhere in the E.U., they were brought as temps to pick daffodils in southwest England, working nine hours a day in the rain and snow. They said they were housed without heating or plumbing in a tent that local officials declared "totally unfit for human habitation," and told by bosses they wouldn't be paid until they coughed up €1,500 each for transport and lodging. After two weeks, they had to be rescued by their embassy. For them, working in a rich, liberal country wasn't exactly the glittering prize the tabloids take for granted.

Between those two visions — a flood of benefit-seeking migrants heading West and the nightmare of exploitation in a rich land — lies Europe's economic and social future. Though the May 1 deadline for enlarging the E.U. by 10 countries and 75 million people was announced in 2002, migration has suddenly become a hot issue. And this isn't the equally controversial migration by Chinese, Africans and other non-Europeans (see following story), but by the citizens of soon-to-be E.U. member states. One by one, the countries already in the E.U. have announced "transitional arrangements" to restrict free entry, which in some cases could last until 2011. As of last week, only Britain and Ireland had planned no limits at all — until Prime Minister Tony Blair bowed to a right-wing press campaign by devising a package expected to require work permits and deny state benefits such as housing to migrants for up to two years.

No, the restrictions don't amount to a new Iron Curtain, but neither do they look like the heady vision of a common European home that was part of the sales pitch for expanding the E.U. On both sides, a kind of buyer's remorse has set in about enlargement — and anxiety about migration is a prominent part. The existing members wonder how many Poles, Czechs and Latvians will come to Hamburg, Lille and Manchester. Will they put current residents out of work? Or do the prosperous nations need computer programmers and ditch-diggers to give their economies a jolt and pay taxes to support their aging populations? Will a big influx give right-wing parties a crude tool for whipping up votes?

The new members — like the Greek daffodil pickers — see a very different image from their end of the telescope. Aren't we Europeans too, with equal rights?, they ask. Do you think we really crave the dirty jobs your own citizens disdain so much that we won't go home again as soon as we've put some money in the bank? Father Christophe Dziech is a Polish priest at Notre Dame de l'Assomption church on the Rue Saint Honoré in Paris whose flock includes a group of some 500 Polish parishioners who attend the Sunday-evening youth service. They are mostly hardworking young people, about half of them illegals. He thinks the restrictions on workers from the East are unfair, because they will drive people underground where they are more likely to be exploited. "It's incomprehensible," he says. "This is a two-speed Europe: one for the rich countries, one for us."

Migration is a perfect topic for appeals to the political gut. Many nations in Europe haven't adjusted from being sources of emigrants to being magnets for newcomers from different cultures. And because no one can say how many migrants will decide to decamp from the accession countries, where they'll go or for how long, it's impossible to counter fear with facts. Those who predict a deluge have some evidence. Poland, the biggest newcomer, has about 40 million people and nearly 20% unemployment. A recent poll showed that 21% of Poles would either "certainly" or "probably" look for work in the West. Among those under 24, and among students, the figure is 50%. Already, around 317,600 Poles work legally in Germany despite its 10.2% unemployment rate, on top of a large number of illegals. (The building trade alone is estimated to have 300,000 illegals, many of them Poles.) The Estonian newspaper Molodezh Estonii recently fretted that a British firm was recruiting bus drivers on a large scale — paying six times the local salary. The last time there was a labor exodus from Estonia, "the scientists were the first to go," the paper warned.

Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, a British pressure group, predicts "a population rise equivalent to seven cities the size of Birmingham" in the next 30 years. Justin Barrett, a veteran Irish anti-E.U. campaigner, fears the economic disparities between West and East are so great that stanching the flow of people will require defying demographic gravity. "In Estonia, you get welfare payments of €6.44 a week. You can get €124 [in Ireland], and that's before housing is provided. Wouldn't you think of going to Estonia if it was the other way around?"

Well — maybe not. Surveys "often exaggerate the proclivity to move," says Danny Sriskandarajah, a research fellow in migration at the Institute for Public Policy Research in London. It's easy to say yes to a pollster, harder to uproot yourself. "People don't want to move from Manchester to London, let alone abroad," he says. "The normal behavior seems to be that people are immobile, leaving aside war and catastrophe," says Hubert Krieger, research manager at Dublin's European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions. In the 1980s, when Greece, Portugal and Spain joined the E.U., very similar warnings were sounded about people flooding north. Existing members restricted entry for up to seven years. What happened? The flows were negligible. Some 10,000 Greeks and 7,700 Portuguese per year moved to other E.U. countries, according to a study for the British Home Office. More Spaniards actually moved back to Spain than emigrated, drawn to its own booming economy.

It might be different this time: the economic lure to move is more powerful, since average income, adjusted for purchasing power, among this year's new entrants is about 45% of the existing members'; in the 1980s, the corresponding figure was 65%. There are some groups — like the Roma in Slovakia (see box) or Russian minorities in the Baltic states — who may be tempted to mount a substantial exodus. And the countries closest to the new entrants, like Germany, may get a disproportionate share.

But overall, a painstaking analysis for the European Commission by the German Institute for Economic Research concluded that the flow from all the new members to the rest of the E.U. would be a relatively modest 294,000 people in the year after all restrictions are lifted, with a long-term cumulative total of some 3.8 million — about 1% of the recipient countries' existing populations. Much of the movement will be short term: young people getting some foreign exposure, then going home. By 2030, the net flows are expected to reverse. "There will be no floodgates opening after May 1," says Krieger. "This is scaremongering."

Even trade unions, which might be expected to fight new competition for their members, are enthusiastic about workers from the East. "There are labor shortages in the E.U. in both high-skill and low-skill jobs," says John Monks, general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation. "The influx of new workers will have a positive impact in filling them." He thinks if employers can't get the people they need legally in Germany or Italy, they'll get them illegally, or move their factories to Poland or Slovakia — or to Asia.

Given the fairly broad consensus that open migration can be managed, it's not surprising the new entrants resent the denigration implicit in talk of "floods" and "benefit scroungers." Jan Kohout, the Czech Deputy Foreign Minister for European Affairs, says, "There is not the slightest economic or rational reason for this. It's domestic politics, populism, that effectively kills for us the feeling of belonging to Europe." But the political pressures are real, and French Minister for European Affairs, Noëlle Lenoir, is not apologetic. "If you visit schools, businesses and town halls the way I have," she says, "you'll hear that unemployment is easily people's greatest concern." The restrictions on free movement "are a way of showing our public that we are not indifferent" — thus curtailing the appeal of extremists like National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Sriskandarajah turns that argument on its head. By treaty, the restrictions on free movement have to end by 2011, "so it's not a question of if, but when." He'd like Britain to go against the E.U. crowd and impose none. "If we take people in the first wave, we can get the best and the brightest." But that's a hard argument for a politician to make in the face of braying tabloids. Even harder is to admit that keeping Europe competitive may depend on it: that the real choice may be between importing workers or exporting jobs.

• J.F.O. MCALLISTER | London
• E.U. states want to restrict the flow of migrants — is that fear mongering or sound policy?