Migration and the New European Enlargement: Bulgaria and Romania
Friday, 18 May 2007Room 3.21, Old Building, LSE
A one-day international conference, entitled ‘Migration and New European Enlargement: Bulgaria and Romania’ was held on 18 May 2007 at the LSE. The conference was dedicated to the timely and highly contested issues of Bulgarian and Romanian migration following the two countries’ EU accession in January this year.
The Hellenic Observatory Director, Professor Kevin Featherstone welcomed the participants of the event and the Acting Romanian Ambassador in London, Mrs Raduta Matache, gave a keynote opening speech.
Discussions that followed were organized in three panels, namely ‘Expectations and realities of migration flows following enlargement’; ‘Migration, borders and policy responses in South-East Europe’; and, ‘Who gains? Who loses? Effects of migration on the origin countries’.
Speakers included Tim Colley (Enlargement and South-East Europe Group, Foreign and Commonwealth Office), Daryana Kotzeva (Bulgarian Embassy in London), Michael MacMillan (Border & Immigration Agency, Home Office), Danny Sriskandarajah (ippr), Dzenk Sejfula (Secretariat for European Affairs, FYROM), Nadya Dimitrova (ICMPD and European Institute, Bulgaria), Elspeth Guilde (University of Nijmagen, Holland and Kingsley and Napley, London), Jeff Dayton-Johnson (Development Centre, OECED, Paris), Vesselin Mintchev (Bulgarian Academy of Science) and Monica Alexandru (University of Bucharest, Romania).
Some of the important issues that emerged at the end of the discussions were: the lack of reliable migration data; the need for more grass root migration research that would allow for more realistic predictions on migration figures regardless of how difficult the forecasting process can be; and concluded that both Bulgaria and Romania were found to be in the migration stage where they did not constitute any migration threat for the rest of Europe.
Please click the following links for some of the papers, speeches and the Conference's conclusions: