Costs and Benefits of Labour Mobility between the EU and the Eastern Partnership Partner Countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine)

The general aim of the proposed project is to contribute to a better understanding of the determinants and effects of immigration from the Partner countries and the relevant labour migration dynamics of the EU. It further aims to propose a series of recommendations that could improve labour exchange impact on sending and receiving countries through labour migration management that facilitates human capital complementarities.

The key objectives of this project are to provide the EU Commission with:

1. An expert analysis of the current patterns of labour migration, their relationships with labour market characteristics as well as the potential for increased flows between the Partner countries and the EU;
2. A series of specific and detailed recommendations that could improve the labour migration management of the EU and of its Member States when seeking human capital complementarities with Partner countries, and the overall EU economic strategy towards Partner countries as well as the labour and labour migration policies of Partner countries;
3. A forecast of the future impact of labour migration on the labour markets of the EU and the Partner countries contextualized in different migration policy scenarios, including labour flows liberalization;
4. A proposal of possible policy/legislative/operational interventions to facilitate labour-matching between the EU and the Partner countries.

The study is to be carried out by a consortium composed of CASE (Center for Socio-Economic Analyis), Warsaw; IZA (Institute for the Future of Labor), Bonn; the Central European University, Budapest; and the London School of Economics Enterprise.