News

The blue card initiative which is supposed to facilitate the entrance of highly qualified non-EU workers in the union will be delayed, the French presidency announced.



The initiative will be adopted in the first months of 2009 instead of December 2008 as initially planned. The delay is due to the objections of the Czech Republic but the situation seems to be fixed now.



UNI Global Union is delighted by the EU parliament’s vote which urges the 27 EU countries to increase the salary bar for immigrant from 1.5 times the national average wage in the country to 1.7. But although “improvements” seem to be possible a French diplomat already declared “there is no margin for manoeuvre to adjust the text on the ceiling for salaries”.



This is extremely disappointing and is far away from being a good sign in terms of competition with other developed economies such as the United States which already attracts twice the number of skilled workers than the EU does.



In fact, it is doubtful that qualified migrants, among which many IT workers, will easily come to the EU if they don’t receive better wages and working conditions than in the U.S. or Japan. UNI Global Union strongly supports the parliament’s view on this issue and highly recommends that the member states changed their position to avoid any social dumping and improve EU’s competitiveness.