A Win-Win: Migration Partnerships for an Aging EU Workforce

Summary

• European Union (EU) member states have ambitious green transition targets and healthcare strategies in place, requiring the relevant sectors to expand. Yet these sectors are already suffering from large workforce shortages.
• Expanding skilled migration from third countries to the EU to meet these shortages risks stripping countries of origin of the talent they need for their own goals.
• Any skilled migration therefore needs to be pursued within partnerships which prioritise meaningful benefits to the country of origin to combat “brain drain”, a “win-win” policy solution.
• This can be done through the Global Skill Partnership model, wherein the country of destination pays for the training of workers within the country of origin, some of whom migrate.
• While migration is a member state competence, there is real opportunity for the incoming European Commission to make a global difference in three ways: (1) expand funding for pilot projects; (2) support the development of new partnerships; and (3) be a positive voice for the role of skilled migration.

What is the issue? 

EU member states have ambitious green transition targets and healthcare strategies in place, with looming deadlines. Under the European Climate Law, the EU is legally committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 percent by 2030 and become climate neutral by 2050. To meet these targets, the European Green Deal aims to create new “green" infrastructure, such as wind farms, heat pumps, and electric vehicle charging points. Similarly, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the EU has launched a €43 billion effort to rebuild health systems and is developing plans for a European Health Union. To accompany this, it has launched the HEROES Joint Action to help member states manage an aging population and the resulting rising demand for healthcare workers. The percentage of people working in the health sector in 2023 has already risen to 8.5 percent of the EU workforce, from 7.3 percent in 2008.

Achieving these targets and strategies will require skilled workers to, among other things, install wind farms and deliver life-saving care. Yet these sectors are already suffering from large labour shortages, largely among roles that are deemed “mid-skilled” (requiring some form of professional education and training, but not an advanced degree). The European Parliament has warned that the EU’s green skills gap is “enormous”; labour shortages within green transition-relevant sectors doubled from 2015 to 2021. For example, 500,000 additional solar workers will be needed by 2030. These shortages can be seen throughout EU member states, constraining future investment: Spain’s solar industry is unable to take on new projects due to workforce shortages; Germany needs over 200,000 more electrical contractors; France needs 100,000 more construction workers; and Sweden needs 30,000 more solar installers. 

Shortages can also be seen throughout the healthcare sector. The world needs 18 million more health workers by 2030; 10 percent of this shortage is concentrated in Europe. In 2022, the European Employment Service Unit (EURES) of the European Labour Authority found 16 countries were facing a shortage of specialist medical providers; 15 were facing shortages of nursing professionals, healthcare assistants, and general medical practitioners; and 11 were facing shortages of home-based care workers. In half of the countries, the shortages were severe.

EU member states can, and should, expand education and training opportunities to up-skill national and EU-wide workers to meet these shortages. However, many of these states are also suffering from aging populations caused by declining fertility rates and increased life expectancy (Figure 1). This is resulting in an absolute shortage of working-age adults; there will be 95 million fewer working-age people in Europe in 2050 than in 2015. Italy, Finland, Portugal, and Greece are now home to four of the five oldest populations in the world (after Japan, at number one), while Southern Europe is the oldest region in the world. There is a smaller number of people vying for a larger number of roles, constraining the ability of EU member states to meet their ambitious goals, requiring urgent attention. As Figure 1 shows, this will decrease the absolute working-age population, and dramatically increase the ratio of retired workers to working-age adults over the coming decades.

Figure 1. Worker shortages in the EU will increase as the working-age population decreases

Some EU member states are already expanding skilled immigration from third countries to meet these labour shortages, in two distinct ways. Firstly, states are liberalising their visa systems. Germany’s new Skilled Immigration Act, for example, aims to make it easier for people with vocational qualifications to permanently access the German labour market. Secondly, states are creating bespoke schemes to attract the specific workers they need. For instance, Spain is recruiting care workers for older persons from Colombia, while Belgium, Germany, and France are recruiting an array of skilled workers (including those within green transition-relevant sectors) from Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia under the THAMM programme, and Germany is recruiting nurses from Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Philippines, Tunisia, Indonesia, Jordan, and India under the Triple Win programme.

These bespoke schemes obviously benefit the participating EU member states, which can recruit the skilled workers they need. However, given the global nature of labour shortages in these sectors, expanding skilled immigration alone can have a detrimental impact on countries of origin, leaving them with fewer skilled workers to meet their own green transition and healthcare goals. There is also a broader case for proactively managing the migration of these skilled workers. If countries of origin do not have the skilled workers they need, this will undermine global efforts to reduce global carbon emissions and curb the spread of diseases, efforts that countries of destination have a vested interest in supporting.

This creates a real opportunity for the incoming European Commission to design a “win-win” solution to this dilemma: expand skilled immigration alongside investments in the country of origin to train new workers and support overall systems development. This must be done in the framework of a genuine partnership which prioritises mutual benefit for countries of destination, origin, and migrants alike. 

Why should the EU address it now? 

There are four main reasons as to why shortages within the green transition-relevant and healthcare sectors are a pressing policy issue and must be addressed through migration partnerships within the next five-year term of the new European Commission.

1. The new EU Commission will be responsible for achieving many of the targets laid out in the European Green Deal and in developing the European Health Union. Yet current progress on both is insufficient. A 2023 review of the implementation of the European Climate Law found that while the continent is moving in the right direction, the pace is too slow. In particular, the European Climate Neutrality Observatory has stated that Europe needs to double the pace of building renovation to meet agreed-upon targets, requiring a massive increase in construction professionals. Similarly, EU health systems are continuing to struggle with the post-COVID backlog in medical care, a surge in mental health conditions, and policy pressure to develop increase resiliency for future shocks. 

2. Shortages within these sectors will persist and may even increase. There are efforts underway throughout EU member states to expand domestic training, thereby increasing the number of skilled citizens who can take up these jobs. For example, for the period 2021-2027, six percent of the European Social Fund (€6 billion) was committed to green skills and green jobs, considerably more than the previous period. However, as described above, EU member states will have an increasingly smaller pool of working-age people to approach.

3. The “race for talent” is underway. Other countries of destination, such as the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia have similar shortages in similar sectors. They are already expanding skilled migration to meet these shortages; about half of all new UK nurse registrants, for instance, were trained overseas. One way in which Europe can make itself more attractive to countries of origin is by providing investments in exchange for skilled workers.

4. Migration partnerships are promoted within a range of different strategies which EU member states have agreed to. For example, the EU Global Health Strategy calls for the development of “mutually beneficial mobility arrangements with partners, including by supporting partner countries in training, recruiting, putting into action and retaining healthcare workers and ensuring their professional development”. They are also promoted within the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Code of Practice, which governs international healthcare recruitment, and subsequent guidelines on bilateral labour agreements (BLAs). Finally, they are explicitly recommended in the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration, which most EU member states agreed to.

Thankfully, there is a groundswell of interest among EU member states in developing such migration partnerships. In 2016 the European Commission established a new Migration Partnership Facility (MPF) which aimed to (among other things) finance new legal labour migration pilot projects. Now in its fourth phase, the MPF has funded 56 projects involving 18 EU member states and 24 partner countries, totalling over €55 million. For example, the MOBILISE project aims to support the migration of climate-smart agricultural trainees from Tunisia, Egypt, and Ethiopia to the Netherlands. Other migration partnerships have been developed by EU member states outside of the MPF framework. For example, Germany is training nurses in the Philippines with a view to supporting some to migrate to Germany and some to be integrated into the Filipino healthcare sector.

These partnerships are, by and large, small in scale. However, given the four reasons outlined above, it is imperative that EU member states experiment with such pilots now to identify what works and why before moving to scale. Such engagement will build the systems, relationships, and trust needed to expand skilled migration in the future at the scale required to achieve the EU’s ambitious green transition and healthcare goals. But to make this positive difference in the world, they need the support of the new European Commission.

What can the EU do about it? 

Given the global nature of shortages within the green transition-relevant and healthcare sectors, it is imperative that any migration model pursued combines both skilled migration and training. This will ensure that such migration doesn’t contribute to “brain drain”, but rather builds a pipeline of talent that can be used to benefit countries of origin and the EU.

One way to do this is through the Global Skill Partnership model. Under the model, the country of destination agrees to provide technology and finance to train potential migrants with targeted skills in the country of origin, prior to migration, and gets migrants with precisely the skills they need to integrate and contribute best upon arrival. The country of origin agrees to provide that training and gets support for the training of non-migrants too, increasing rather than draining human capital. 

The defining feature of the Global Skill Partnership is what we call the “dual track” (figure 2). At the start of or during the training, trainees can pick which track they want to go down: a “home” track for non-migrants and an “away” track for migrants. Those who choose to stay are plugged back into the local labour market, with increased skills and earning potential. Those who choose to move have increased skills and earning potential, and the ability to migrate legally and safely. They could also be provided with additional training in soft skills, for example in languages or other facets of integration. The model is currently being trialled around the world within a range of sectors, including construction, engineering, manufacturing, and healthcare.

Figure 2. The Global Skill Partnership model

Negotiating new migration partnerships is, of course, member state competency. However, there are efforts underway at the European level to bring together coalitions of willing states to partner on broader partnerships, reducing transaction costs and enabling pilots to scale quickly. For example, the Global Skill Partnership model could be implemented within the Talent Partnerships framework, recently announced by the European Commission and intended to enhance legal pathways to the EU while engaging on migration management. Talent Partnerships are currently in development with Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, all countries that have both expressed an interest in expanding skilled migration pathways and a willingness to accept an increased number of returned migrants. While partnerships with these countries are strategically important, from a demographic perspective, it will also be necessary to look to sub-Saharan Africa. That region has a highly educated and skilled youth pollution and there is increasing emigration pressure. Cooperating with countries such as Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, and Kenya will therefore be key.

Here, the European Commission has a strong role to play. There is a real opportunity for the incoming Commissioners and staff to make a positive difference in the world, expanding the stock of skilled workers and contributing to the expansion of universal healthcare and carbon reduction. To do so, they should pursue three things: 

1. Expand funding to the MPF / for pilot projects. As described above, in eight years, the MPF has spent €55 million on labour migration projects. While this may seem like a lot, it pales in comparison to how much is spent on border security and migration management; 200 times more (€10.7 billion) is earmarked for 2021-2027. Given the importance of legal migration pathways in reducing irregular migration, this huge imbalance should be addressed. In particular, the new Commissioner in charge of Home Affairs should dedicate a greater share of the Asylum, Migration, and Integration Fund (AMIF) to expanding legal migration pathways. 

2. Support the development of new partnerships. While many EU member states have expressed an interest in developing migration partnerships, it can be difficult for them to dedicate resources to scoping such partnerships. The European Commission can play this role: identifying where countries of destination and countries of origin have a mutual interest in collaborating on labour migration; scoping how a Global Skill Partnership could be implemented in practice; and providing resources to support this implementation. This will be of particular importance for the new Commissioner in charge of International Partnerships, as developing better relationships with countries of origin will be a core part of their remit.

3. Be a positive voice for the role of skilled migration. The last European Commission was notable for its rhetoric on labour migration, with many Commissioners talking about the need to expand legal pathways, and the importance of labour migration for the future growth of the EU. It is hoped that such rhetoric will be continued by both the Commissioners responsible for Home Affairs and International Partnerships. This will go a long way to convincing member states and international bodies (such as the WHO) of the need to embrace “win-win” migration partnerships, filling skill shortages and contributing to the global stock of skilled workers.