Documents EU enlargement 797 results

"The enlargements of the Single Market in 2004 and 2007, have fundamentally altered shipbuilding employers' production and staffing possibilities. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, Norwegian shipbuilders began to offshore hull production and outfitting to countries in central and eastern Europe (the CEE countries) and eventually acquired several Romanian yards. From 2004, Norwegian yards also hired large amounts of CEE workers through temporary agencies and subcontractors. Transforming the mode of production and staffing in the yards, this two-way mobility has been driven by opportunities to increase production, overcome labour shortages, reduce labour and production costs, and adjust more flexibly to fluctuations in markets and production. This enabled the shipbuilding industry to handle a boom in production of offshore supply ships and the ensuing bust after the oil price dived in 2014.
The shipyard industry is part of the Norwegian core industrial relations system, with strong trade unions and employers' associations. As wages and labour costs are among the highest in Europe, the yards' competitiveness depends on high quality and productivity.
The dual mobility and outsourcing of work has led to a dualisation of the workforce, and declining employment among local blue-collar workers. Due to numerous examples of inferior wages and conditions among the subcontracted CEE-workforce, the unions in 2008 won through with demands for extension of minimum terms in the collective agreement, fueling tension and legal strife between the social partners. Eventually further re-regulation and enforcement measures were enacted, strengthening the rights and remuneration of migrant workers.
Our overall findings suggest that the two-way mobility of production factors can generate gains both for western and eastern yards and workers. However, the dual mobility has contributed to erosion of the industry's national skill base and establishment of a flexible segment of migrant workers who are not incorporated in the model of organised labour relations, lacking institutional representation and voice.
Looking ahead, the ongoing turn towards the production of more technology-intensive ‘green' vessels will require upgrading of qualifications, calling for more investment in vocational training, skill formation and long-term recruitment."

"Is the EU enlargement the success EU institutions proclaim? Based on fifteen years of fieldwork research across Central and Eastern Europe and on migrants in the UK and Germany, this book provides a less glittering answer. The EU has betrayed hopes of social cohesion: social regulations have been forgotten, multinationals use threats of relocations, and workers, left without institutional channels to voice their concerns, have reacted by leaving their countries en masse. Yet migration, for many, increases social vulnerability.

Drawing on Hirschman's concepts of ‘Exit' and ‘Voice', the book traces the origins of such failures in the management of EU enlargement as a pure economic and market-creating exercise, neglecting the inherently political nature of labour relations. The reinforcement of market mechanisms without political counterbalances has resulted in an increase in opportunistic ‘exit' behaviour by both employers and employees, and thereby in a worsening quality of democracy, at workplace, national and European levels. As a result of this process, the EU has become more similar to the North American Free Trade Agreement between USA, Canada and Mexico, where social rights are marginalized and economic integration does not translate into better development. "

"As in the two previous editions of Think Global – Act European (TGAE), coordinated by Notre Europe, this report focuses on the medium-term, covering the Polish, Danish and Cypriot Trio Presidency, which will run from July 2011 to December 2012.

Such a focus allows for an in-depth analysis of the Trio's role, both front-stage and back-stage, as it develops in the context of the Lisbon Treaty's implementation. Accordingly, the authors of this report, coming from 16 European think tanks, take stock of the initiatives adopted during the past Trio Presidency, identify emerging challenges and formulate concrete short- to medium-term proposals aiming for rapid policy-progress.

Overall, the 18-month time frame to which each new edition of TGAE is devoted produces, from one report to the next, a comprehensive chronological picture of the EU's development."

"Poland's shipbuilding sector has been undergoing turbulent change for more than 30 years. Once a leading manufacturing sector, it went through an initial transformation shock in the 1990s, experienced a short recovery, then fell into a severe crisis following EU enlargement and the 2008 global financial crisis, only to start to regain its composure in the 2010s. The impacts of Covid-19 and subsequent crises have not been overly negative, largely exacerbating risks related to high inflation and rising energy prices. Polish shipyards have managed to develop new market and product strategies, mainly exploring particular niches and taking advantage of new trends emerging in the global industry as a result of technological innovation (such as offshore windmills) or demand for specialised, tailor-made solutions. The sector experienced the effects of outward migration in the early years of EU membership, with workers leaving in search of employment in Western shipyards. The evolution of the domestic labour market, in which the combined effects of steady economic growth, post-accession emigration, falling interest among labour market entrants in joining the industry, and general demographic tendencies (societal ‘aging' and the fall in the proportion of people of working age) meant that growing demand came up against a falling labour supply. Labour shortages have been met by labour immigration, mainly from Ukraine. Shipbuilding has come to depend on foreign workers. At the CRIST shipyard foreign workers (third-country citizens) constitute nearly 40 per cent of the workforce, while at Remontowa Shipbuilding it is about 10 per cent. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 did not trigger an increase in labour supply, as most of the newest wave of incoming Ukrainian migrants (war refugees) are women and minors. The negative impact of inflation on real wages might potentially translate into renewed interest in the ‘exit' option among Polish workers, seeking work (and higher incomes) abroad in more affluent EU/EEA countries."

"What has come to be known as the ‘polycrisis', which started with the Covid-19 pandemic, hit the German shipbuilding industry after more than a decade of profound restructuring spurred by the previous financial and economic crisis in 2008. Global overcapacities and fierce price competition with Asian yards led to a shift in production towards complex high-tech segments, such as cruise ships, mega-yachts, ferries and other specialised vessels. This contributed to a recovery of the shipbuilding industry in the 2010s, but the success was precarious in several ways. First, overcapacities in the global market persisted and began to spill over to the ‘niche' segments. Moreover, the industry's dependence on state financial support has increased, culminating most recently in a return to (partial) state ownership, a decision that was the subject of controversial public debate. Finally, and most importantly, the restructuring of the industry included also a change in hiring strategies: the share of temporary agency workers and subcontracted workers from both German and foreign-based companies increased and reached its highest level to date in 2019 at approximately 50 per cent. Works councils adopted an ambiguous stance towards the use of the peripheral workforce, contesting their excessive use, but at the same time aware of the overall competitive advantage arising from lower wage levels. This led to precarious compromises with management. Supported by the trade union, from 2013 the latter began to address the protective gaps, albeit with limited ambitions in the case of migrant workers (restricted mainly to minimum standards for pay, occupational health and safety, and housing). Success was also limited, not least because of their predominant reliance on novel institutional rights which proved to be insufficient. Despite re-regulatory efforts also by the legislator, shipbuilding companies have developed strategies of rule avoidance, which serve to stabilise the path of the transnationalised export-oriented growth model, but are also hampering both individual workers' attempts to fight wage theft with the help of consulting agencies, and strategies of organised labour aimed at reducing inequalities."

"This report analyses the shipbuilding industry in Italy. Based on 65 interviews (see List of interviews) with workers, managers and key witnesses collected from 2020 to 2024, we highlight how the transformation of shipbuilding in Italy has been based on: (i) increasing internationalisation of production; (ii) strong outsourcing of operations within Italian yards; (iii) substantial change in the composition of the workforce, with the employment of migrant workers; and (iv) a weakening of trade unions. This report is structured as follows. First, an overview of Italian shipbuilding is provided, mentioning both Fincantieri and the other private enterprises operating in the sector. Focusing mainly on Fincantieri as the leading company in the industry, the report then provides a historical overview of the transformations in production that have occurred since the crisis of the 1970s and globalisation. This study then analyses the most recent transformations with regard to financialisation, functioning of subcontracting chains and composition of the working class. Some insights from the Marghera and Monfalcone case studies are reported, before a brief discussion of the survey results."

"Key findings
In recent decades, European shipyards have offshored the production of hulls (the main body of the ship) and the installation of ships' equipment (outfitting) to eastern European countries with lower wages, while more and more of the work in western yards has been carried out by lower paid migrant workers from eastern Europe. This distinct pattern of ‘dual mobility' in shipbuilding has had mixed effects. On the positive side, western shipyards have benefitted from the supply of cheap hulls and flexible labour on lower wages, while most of the labour migrants are paid substantially higher wages than at home. The transfer of production and skills from western to eastern European shipyards has also contributed to a revitalisation of shipbuilding in these regions, preserving jobs and boosting competitiveness. On the negative side, dual mobility has also contributed to a reduction in recruitment and rising labour and skills shortages, along with fragmentation and dualisation of labour markets between directly employed staff and subcontracted workers, mainly migrants. Many of the latter have also experienced precarious working and living conditions, marked by high job and income insecurity, along with poor housing and working conditions.
To strengthen the gains and avoid the negative consequences, the following challenges need to be tackled:
– development of a coordinated European strategy for enhanced recruitment, vocational training and investment in workers' skills;
– upgrading of blue-collar work, along with better regulation of subcontracting to reduce the disparities in pay and conditions between internal and external labour;
– stricter enforcement of the EU Directives on adequate minimum wages in the European Union (22 October 2022), on temporary agency work (19 November 2008) and on the posting of workers in the framework of the provision of services (28 June 2018) to ensure equal pay for the same work in the same place;
– increased public support through European and national funding for research and development (R&D) and innovation, along with a comprehensive industrial strategy for the sector to advance the development of new technology and fossil-free fuel required to accelerate the sector's twin green and digital transition;
– more institutionalised and coordinated transnational labour market governance within the shipbuilding industry, especially at the yard level, to strengthen productivity and improve the working conditions of cross-border labour."

"This study contributes to the literature on destination-country consequences of international migration with investigations on the effects of immigration from new EU member states and Eastern Partnership countries on the economies of old EU member states over the years 1995-2010. Using a rich international migration dataset and an empirical model accounting for the endogeneity of migration flows we find positive and significant effects of post-enlargement migration flows from new EU member states on old member states' GDP, GDP per capita, and employment rate and a negative effect on output per worker. We also find small, but statistically significant negative effects of migration from Eastern Partnership countries on receiving countries' GDP, GDP per capita, employment rate, and capital stock, but a positive significant effect on capital-to-labor ratio. These results mark an economic success of the EU enlargements and EU's free movement of workers."