It’s high time France adopted an “economic, selective and thoughtful immigration policy” as labour shortages grow across the EU, Patrick Martin, president of the business organisation Medef, told Radio Classique on Tuesday.
The comments came before the government managed to push its controversial immigration bill through the National Assembly very late on Tuesday after the text had been fine-tuned behind closed doors via a parliamentary procedure that resembles that of ‘trilogues’.
“What’s so frustrating is that we have not been asking ourselves the essential question: will we need migrant labour?” to meet all open vacancies in the next few years, Patrick Martin, president of France’s most prominent business organisation, Medef, told Radio Classique on Tuesday.
By 2030, 800,000 jobs would have to be filled, with companies facing “significant recruitment pressures”, the group’s president representing about 10 million workers, added.
In his view, relying at least partly on a labour force from other parts of the world is necessary for France and the EU.
“Obviously, we need to [integrate into the labour market] people who already live in France,” Martin said, but it’s just not enough: “We have to call a spade a spade and make a choice [in favour of bringing in an immigrant workforce]”.
Labour shortages are widespread across the EU and in many sectors of the economy.
According to a European Commission report published in July 2023, shortages “are expected to persist in both high skills and low skills occupations, driven by the creation of new jobs and the need to replace workers who retire”.
Contrary to a dominating narrative by the right and far-right, which claims migrants “forum-shop” between EU member states to choose those with the highest available social benefits, a large body of research shows regularising working migrants has net positive economic gains.
“The positive effects of regularising working migrants on economic activity can be significant”, Pierre Cahuc, a Sciences Po scholar, wrote in a Les Echos op-ed in September.
“It’s a crucial element to consider in a context of low growth and population ageing. On the fiscal side, regularisation could translate into a net positive, as declared work brings in more revenues for the State.”
More broadly, studies have found that, on average, the regularisation of migrants has positive fiscal and macroeconomic consequences in all OECD countries.
There is an urgent need for a “reasoned” debate over economic immigration, Martin concluded: “It’s not business leaders that want foreign labour; it’s the economy that requires it”.
(Théo Bourgery-Gonse | Euractiv France)
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Le Pen claims ‘ideological victory’ after French lawmakers approve contested immigration billFrench lawmakers approved a hotly contested immigration bill on Tuesday, with both houses of parliament giving the go-ahead to a legislative overhaul that is much tougher than the government’s initial text: after heavy concessions to the right, severely curtails immigrants’ rights to welfare benefits and family reunification.
Source: euractiv.com
