"Europe's economy needs a million workers from abroad every year," the European Commissioner for Home Affairs announced Ylva Johansson in January. This is linked to demographic change in Europe, which is reducing the number of working-age people.
The so-called European Talent Partnerships are being put forward as a solution to this problem. They were announced in June 2021 with the aim of attracting non-EU citizens into the European workforce and thereby filling gaps in the labour market. The Commission regards talent partnerships as a "triple win" – for the EU economy and for partner countries outside the European Union, which often face high unemployment. The workers themselves would, of course, also stand to gain.
A collection of small-scale projects
The initial plans envisaged that the first partnerships would be set up by the end of 2022, but no concrete agreements have been reached to date. The EU has funded a variety of pilot projects grouped under the "Talent Partnerships umbrella". They differ in design, but often involve training initiatives in non-EU partner countries and support for workers during relocation.
"It is hard to say when a Talent Partnership begins and what it actually means," says Bernd Parusel, senior researcher at the Swedish Institute for European Policy Studies, adding that the arrangements are scattered across various international and bilateral agreements.
Despite millions in funding for pilot projects, European companies have recruited only a small number of workers. The MATCH project, for example, which was intended to match workers from Senegal and Nigeria with employers in four EU countries, resulted in just eight people being hired.
Another pilot project – THAMM – is run by several organisations without a single joint evaluation. In Germany, the development cooperation agency (GIZ) helped more than 400 people find a job or an apprenticeship. Yet gauging the impact over the project's lifetime is difficult, as participants were followed for only three to six months, whereas an apprenticeship usually lasts several years.
"These are interesting pilot projects, but they are not enough to meet the enormous needs we are already seeing in some sectors," says Jean-Louis De Brouwer (Jean-Louis De Brouwer), director of the European Affairs Programme at the Egmont Institute, who doubts whether the projects can be scaled up to the extent required.
Talent partnerships as a "friendly helper" in migration talks
"In many countries there is a kind of schizophrenia between the toxic debate about migration and the acknowledgement that workers are needed," says De Brouwer.
Commissioner Johansson promotes talent partnerships as one strand of migration talks with partner countries and stresses their importance in negotiations on readmission agreements. This approach is also reflected in the choice of partner countries.
Asked about the current state of the Talent Partnership negotiations, European Commission spokesperson for home affairs Anitta Hipper (Anitta Hipper) says that partnerships with Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Pakistan and Bangladesh are the priority. Round-table talks are planned for the first half of 2024.
Through these partnerships, third countries should be drawn into "migration management, in particular by helping to reduce irregular migration and by giving partners an incentive to cooperate on return and readmission," Hipper writes. Partnerships with Nigeria and Senegal depend on "improved cooperation across all migration issues".
An internal EU document from February 2024 states: "The timing for launching a talent partnership [with Senegal] is not considered quite right, given the overall level of cooperation, including on readmission". As for Nigeria, a readmission agreement is the first step towards a comprehensive partnership, of which a talent partnership would form part".
Partner countries criticise this conditionality. Among them, Naela Gabr (Naela Gabr), chair of Egypt's National Coordinating Committee for Combating and Preventing Illegal Migration and Human Trafficking, points to Egypt's position as a transit country and its efforts to combat irregular migration: "We are preventing a migration tsunami towards Europe". In her view, labour mobility projects can benefit everyone, but they need consistent support and funding.
At the same time, the multimillion-euro "cash for migration control" deals the EU has struck with Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and, most recently, Lebanon have drawn criticism from civil society organisations over the lack of human rights guarantees and the funding of inhumane detention and forced returns.
Bernd Parusel comments: "Europe is prepared to do whatever it takes to control irregular migration, even to strike questionable deals with third countries. There is also an outsourcing dimension: other countries are given money so that they can take over migration control on our behalf."
Against this backdrop, Marie Walter-Franke (Marie Walter-Franke), a researcher at the German Expert Council on Integration and Migration (SVR), considers talent partnerships to be "little more than a friendly minor instrument" in negotiations that are otherwise focused on return and migration control. She has observed that partner countries "do not take the European Union seriously", because requests to cooperate on migration control and returns are not backed by concrete offers from the European side that would give talent partnerships substance.
These could include simpler admission procedures, such as the points-based systems already used in Canada and elsewhere, and visa routes for jobs at every skill level.
Still plenty of bureaucratic obstacles
Employers and non-EU workers face difficulties because legal competence over visa rules and the recognition of qualifications is split between the EU and the member states.
The Commission has acknowledged this problem and called on member states to implement existing EU law more precisely. It has also proposed revising the EU legislation that sets the framework for the legal residence of non-EU workers in the European Union.
The recently adopted revised Single Permit Directive is one way in which the EU is seeking to simplify the application process for non-EU workers, by ensuring faster decisions, allowing them to change employer and letting them keep their residence during a period of unemployment. The Commission also proposed improvements to long-term residence, but in March 2024 these were put on hold because Parliament and the Council were unable to reach agreement.
Beyond residence permits, the recognition of qualifications can be another obstacle. Non-EU nationals working in the EU are almost twice as likely as EU citizens in their home countries to work in jobs below their level of qualification. To address this, in November the Commission proposed simplifying the procedures for recognising foreign qualifications.
"It is not just about the number of people moved"
Organisations overseeing the pilot projects, such as the Migration Partnership Facility (MPF), which operates under the auspices of the International Centre for Migration Policy Development, stress the importance of trying out new methods in order to gain experience and build cooperation on migration. Diana Stefanescu (Diana Stefanescu), an MPF project specialist on labour mobility, said in an interview: "These are very early-stage projects. It is not just about the number of people moved."
A cost and value analysis carried out by Digital Explorers, a Lithuanian-Nigerian partnership under the MPF, projected that the financial benefits would exceed the 1.3 million euros of EU funding. It took into account that the number of people remaining in Europe after the project ends will gradually decline.
Stefanescu adds: "Pilot projects are the first step towards opening the door to far broader cooperation and impact, and in my view the potential is great, but greater funding is needed."
The Commission notes that the scale of the pilot projects has grown over time and that it "stands ready to continue supporting broader initiatives. That also depends on the commitment of the member states, which remain competent to set admission volumes on their own territory."
The EU concentrates its spending on border control
To date, Europe has invested around 82.2 million euros in Talent Partnership projects. The funding has come mainly from the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF), the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument (NDICI) and the EU Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF), which NGOs have criticised for diverting development aid towards stopping "irregular" migration.
According to Commissioner Johansson, in 2023 the EU saw 300,000 "irregular arrivals", compared with 3.5 million people who arrived through "regular channels". Yet EU funding is largely geared towards curbing migration and increasing returns.
Although AMIF has grown by 29% compared with the previous EU budget – from 6.7 billion euros to 8.7 billion euros (in 2018 prices) – funding largely intended for border protection has more than doubled. The EU Border and Coast Guard Agency Frontex alone is due to receive a further 5.6 billion euros by 2027.
Europe's economy needs foreign workers
As labour shortages continue to grow, companies are increasingly interested in recruiting workers from abroad. Stefanescu of the MPF is optimistic that companies will step up the investment needed to make the recruitment of foreign workers sustainable. Yet despite private sector interest, some projects cannot get off the ground for lack of political support. "Some governments are worried about the political impact of the projects".
"Providing safe and legal pathways is a priority," the EU Commission promised when the Talent Partnerships were launched. Whether Europe can keep that promise depends largely on the political will of the member states to pursue policies that make working in the European Union attractive.
The process involves more than simplifying admission procedures and aligning them with labour market needs. It also requires improving working conditions and tackling discrimination against third-country nationals, who more often work in in-demand occupations and are more often exposed to discrimination.
"It takes courage to pursue policies that are not driven by the fear that too many people might come, or that the wrong people will come," stresses Walter-Franke.
Failing to address labour and skills shortages will harm Europe's economy, particularly as demographic change and the green and digital transitions continue to strain the labour market. Using talent partnerships as a bargaining chip to enforce migration control squanders their potential.
This article is part of the "Crossborder Journalism Campus", an Erasmus+ project of the University of Gothenburg, Leipzig University and the Centre de Formation des Journalistes in Paris.