EU2 migrants -
where are
they?
2 February 2015
On 1 January 2014 Britain opened its doors to citizens of the EU2 nations, Bulgaria and Romania. The media went mad, preparing UK residents for a migrant influx comparable with that of their Eastern European predecessors in 2005.
However, this invasion and the predicted scrounging of public funds never materialised despite the tabloids’ attempts at misleading headlines. The predicted hordes were contradicted by the relatively low figures produced by the Office for National Statistics, revealing that only 32,000 EU2 citizens had entered the UK in the year ending June 2014.
But why is this?
The figures reveal that many Bulgarians and Romanians were in the UK before the transitional employment restrictions were lifted, as by September 2014 around 104,000 national insurance numbers (a 468% rise on the previous year) had been allocated to Romanians and 32,000 to Bulgarians. This increase has been attributed to the fact that many of those already working in the UK had progressed from working in the grey economy into regular, taxable employment.
Another key factor underlying the sluggish inflow of EU2 migrants is that other countries, notably Germany, The Netherlands and six other EU countries, opened their labour markets to Bulgarian and Romanian workers at the same time as the UK. An estimated one million EU2 citizens have chosen to go to Spain, with a similar number having emigrated to Italy.
There is also little evidence of the expected dependence upon public funds, as almost 80% of Bulgarians and Romanians in the UK are reported to be in some kind of employment.
The media are still planting seeds of discord when it comes to EU2 migrants, with headlines promising that this will soon increase to an unmanageable size. For the time being, however, the facts and figures reveal that the migration of EU2 citizens to the UK made up only 6% of the UK’s total immigration figure for the year ending June 2014.
More on EU migration:
Concerns over Cameron’s cap on EU migration
More EU doctors in the UK than ever before
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