MIGRATION TRENDS IN THE EASTERN-EUROPEAN COUNTRIES AFTER THE ACCESSION

Abstract

The European Union faces its greatest challenge ok its history at the beginning of the 21st century. Because of the englarment process of new member countries several problems were raised, one of them was the most important, which was the free movement of people. Before the Eastern-Central European countries’ englarment, many member countries feared multitudinous migration wave, which lays the Western-Europe and the Eastern-Central-European employees are taking away work of other people. It followed that the member countries of the European Union restricted their labour market that stay clear of prospective multitudinous immigration. At the same time the Eastern-Central -European countries were given the unprecedented chance to introduce reverse limitations on the workforce migrating from EU-15 members by previous englarment’s experience. The present paper is looking for the following questions: why the European Union was concerned about the free movement of people; how the number of the Eastern-Central- -European citizens changed; how the number of foreign citizens in Hungary changed. The lessons were learnt from previous enlargements as well as workforce data and migration within the EU.