Impact of the ‘Big bang’ enlargement on EU foreign policy – 10 years on. CEPS Commentary, 5 May 2014

The tendency within the EU today to blur distinctions between internal and external policies and between hard and soft security demands a more holistic and inclusive approach in tackling challenges and seizing opportunities if the EU is to make good on its foreign policy objectives. In his assessment of the impact of the ‘big bang’ enlargement on EU foreign policy a decade later, Steven Blockmans finds that the experience and expertise of the (by now not so) new member states has been and will continue to be indispensable for the European Union.

Cyclical dimensions of labour mobility after EU enlargement. Bruegel Working Paper 2009/03, May 2009

At a time of symmetric global slowdown, migration cannot contribute as much to absorbing economic shocks as it could if the shock were asymmetric. • Early evidence suggests that the crisis has led to a drop in immigration and even net return migration from some countries. This has helped the adjustment of former EU15 host countries and has exacerbated adjustment in former source countries in the new member states. In the short run, the stock of new member-state migrants in the EU15 will fall owing to diminished job opportunities for migrants. • Changes in the unemployment rate in the host country are found to impact migration more than that of changes in the unemployment rate in the source country. In part, this can be explained by the disproportionate risk of migrants losing their jobs in the downturn. • In the longer run, the crisis is set to increase migration from the new member states compared to what would have been the case without the crisis. This is because the crisis has undermined the economic growth model of those new member states that relied heavily on external financing to fuel their growth.