Verbatim report of proceedings

Wednesday, 19 May 2021 - Brussels

New avenues for legal labour migration (debate)

  Lena Düpont, on behalf of the PPE Group. – Madam President, rebuilding our economy after the pandemic, maintaining prosperity and innovation – not only for the next years, but for the next decades to come – will be a huge task. For better or for worse, we are not alone in this competition: there is, and there will be a global race, a global need for the most talented. Europe should not lose out in this competition, but so far we do.

The United States, Canada and Australia are attracting far more talent from abroad. So it’s a good time to assess Europe’s existing rules on legal migration, looking out for ways to improve the tools at hand, seeking ways to enhance better coherence and helping Member States fulfil their needs.

We can work on this with a whole bunch of measures: by conducting well—elaborated labour market tests to better match needs and skills; by further developing the talent partnership that we just heard of with key countries, having also in mind the future talent pool that the Commission is working on; by making full use of the reformed Blue Card where we’ve just reached a major breakthrough; and by using legal migration as an essential part of our relations with countries of origin and transit.

The key for this to be a success is the right context. Legal migration is essentially linked to labour market needs and thus the Member States are competent to decide on the numbers, the conditions, and the type of labour migration for which they grant access to the labour market.

In this spirit, I look forward to a close and good dialogue with Commission and the Council to assess the right mix between new legislation, already foreseen, and adapting existing tools and improving coherence between them.