23.04.2014 Free movement of workers: access to the labour market remains difficult

Pastural (2014) reports – on the occasion of the European free movement of workers with Romania and Bulgaria since January 2014 – about possible improvements in the access of Rroma to the French labour market. However, this is not the case. The access to the labour market for the low-skilled Rroma workers remains very difficult: “Full of experience as a result of working in agriculture or construction in Greece and Italy, Ionut Nica waited impatiently for the end of the transitional arrangements, towards the access of Romanian nationals to the labour market of the Schengen area. Since January 2014, Ionut has the right to work. “There was a tremendous hope on the part of Mr. Nica, who expected this splendid date of the month of January as if it would change his whole life”, laments Florence Marrand, social worker at the medical-social establishment of the Conseil général of Puy-de-Dôme, who advises Ionut Nica regularly for a little over one year. “Today, he is deeply disappointed. Certainly, he was able to enrol at the job centre, he could enrol at the work-assistant mission, he was able to answers vacancies. But nothing has changed specifically, absolutely nothing…“ It is to hope that Pastural is wrong with his portrayal of two individual cases, and the inclusion of immigrant Rroma into the labour market will enhance. At the latest, when the effects of the economic crisis are finally gone. One problem is, according to Pastural, the lack of resources to improve ones qualifications, and thus the appeal for the labour market.