Brussels, 15/01/2014 (Agence Europe) - Bulgarian and Romanian immigration brings much more to western European countries, especially the United Kingdom and Ireland, than it costs, according to a Swedish economist in a study published on Tuesday 14 January and included in a report by AFP.
Joakim Ruist, researcher at the University of Gothenburg, has conducted a precise calculation for Sweden, where Bulgarians and Romanians have been working without any restrictions since 2007, and overall calculations for the 14 other EU countries, before EU enlargement of the former Communist bloc.
He stated that “my conclusions clearly show that the fears currently expressed in other European countries regarding the heavy burden on the welfare state exerted by unrestricted immigration from Romania and Bulgaria are unfounded”. In Sweden, one of the most generous countries in the EU with regard to its immigrants and where the unemployment difference between immigrants and nationals is greatest, Bulgarians and Romanians provide a 30% net benefit to the state, Ruist states. He explains in an article that “this positive result is due to the fact that migrants receive fewer social benefits and are less targeted by social spending than the Swedish population on average. This more than compensates the fact that they earn less on average and subsequently pay fewer taxes”. According to this research, the United Kingdom and Ireland are the two countries that benefit most from this immigration, partly because Bulgarians and Romanians already arrive in the country knowing English and also because the two countries are “comparatively small welfare state countries”. The study focuses on a sample of a fifth of 10,000 Bulgarians and Romanians residing in Sweden at the end of 2011. It assesses the taxes they have paid and the public spending they benefit from (social and family allocations, health and public services). (SP/trans.fl)