All hail the great Alliance!

—Zoe

When things start to fall apart, people (and countries) start turning on one another. I knew something like this was bound to happen sooner or later:

Spain Gets Approval to Keep Romanians Out

BRUSSELS — In the latest challenge to the European Union’s drive toward closer integration, Spain won approval Thursday to keep Romanians from seeking work there, arguing that its battered economy could not absorb fresh inflows of workers.

The linked NYT article isn’t exactly very clear (and muddles up the information with discussion about an unrelated dispute between Denmark and Germany) but essentially what happened was that in 2009, Spain allowed Romanians to enter the Spanish job market more or less exactly the same as a (native) Spaniard could. In other words, a Romanian could apply for a job (in Spain) the same as anyone else from the European Union.

Now that Spain is facing a labor crisis (officially supposed to be 20% unemployment or even higher) they specifically sought permission to ban Romanians from unfettered access to jobs in Spain, and just received that permission this week from the European Union. Mind you, it doesn’t ban Bulgarian or other EU member citizens from the job market, only Romanians.

Furthermore, this new ban will not affect Romanians wishing to travel to Spain, only those seeking to work there. Nor will it be retroactive, meaning that Romanians already working in Spain won’t be affected by this decision.

A far better article on this topic can be found in Spanish from El Pais, which also mentions that there are officially 864,000 Romanians in Spain, compromising a whopping 15% of all immigrants in that country. Furthermore, the article states that 50,000 of those Romanians are drawing (Spanish) unemployment checks, which has to be at least part of the reason why some Spanish people resent the presence of so many Romanians in their country.

Regrettably, the guy actually making this decision to allow Spain to block Romanians (and only Romanians) from free access to the job market was the EU Employment Commissioner Laszlo Andor, who hails from Hungary, a man with strong ties to one of the leading political parties there (MSZP). That’s got to add a little salt to the wound for Romanians.

In fairness to Spain, El Pais is correct in noting that France, Germany, Italy and Great Britain already restrict Romanians from full entry into their job markets, and require the obtaining of special visas. Spain, from 2009 until now, was unique in that it did not have any barriers. So what’s really going on is that Spain is essentially withdrawing that open access.

However, since it is targeted solely against Romanians and there is already some hostility between the two groups (and a 20% or higher unemployment rate doesn’t help), this is bound to cause more friction.

What Spain truly needs is to get its country and economy into shape and then restrictions on which EU citizens are allowed to work and which aren’t would not even be an issue. But for now, Spain is putting the brakes on new Romanians from full access to the few jobs that are left out there.

If you are Romanian and want more details about how this might affect you (or someone you know), see this link from the Romanian embassy in Madrid.