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BBC NEWS
Romania braced to lose more workers
By Tim Franks
BBC News, Bucharest

You have to go early to catch the people waiting to go to the UK.

At 7.20am, on the small green beside the British Embassy in Bucharest, there's a crowd of about 40 people munching rolls and smoking.

Most people are waiting for a tourist visa. Some, like Ilie, want to work. He's a 23-year-old plasterer.

"I've been in England for four years," Ilie tells me. This is the first time he's applied for a work permit. "I was illegal before. Now I'm going to try to be legal, so that I can set up my own business."

Officials at the British Embassy in Bucharest say they have handed out about 3,300 work permits.

So once Romania joins the European Union, how many more people are likely to come off the dilapidated grey-brown streets of Bucharest and beyond, to look for work in Britain?

'No inundation'

The British government is unwilling to guess, at least in public. And there's no consensus among researchers.

We don't have people left in Romania - we even have problems finding people to work for us here
Stelian Botagan, jobs agency director
One British think-tank puts the figure at 41,000 Romanians in the first year. Another estimates 10 times that number in the first two years after accession.

For many Romanians, their route to relative riches is through an international jobs agency, such as Central Concert, a small outfit, up a murky staircase in a run-down apartment block.

Stelian Botagan is the phlegmatic boss of the agency. He has 17 years' experience, placing people all round Europe. And of one thing he's sure: there will be no inundation.

"It's a crisis," he tells me.

"We don't have people left in Romania. We even have problems finding people to work for us here. They've already left."

Stelian reckons that the government's estimate of just under two million Romanians working abroad doesn't nearly hit the target.

He says it's closer to four million, when you include all those who are working without papers, illegally.

Popular destinations

Stelian says that you don't have to travel far out of Bucharest to find villages empty of their workforces.

We found one village which was typical. In Peretu, as in the vast majority of Romania, the destination isn't Britain - but Italy, Germany, Greece or - as in the case of Peretu, Spain.

The mayor reckons that one in five adults in his village have gone to Spain - reflecting the proportion of emigre workers nationwide.

Stefan Calea is one of them. He's 61 years old, and is spending a few weeks' holiday back in his home village.

He's using the money he's made to do up his bathroom. Stefan happily admits that when he first went to Spain, six years ago, he did so illegally: "Everyone does, to start off with," he says.

But now he has his papers, and with him are 13 members of his family.

It's that age-old and powerful incentive - the wish to make money - that leads most Romanian observers to decry the worth of any temporary barriers, imposed by existing EU member states, on would-be workers from Romania.

The restrictions just won't be very effective, they argue.

'Barbarian hordes'

Mihai Ungureanu, the country's sparky, young foreign minister makes a broader point.

He warns against what he calls the "false prophets" abroad - those who paint the picture of Romanians as the "barbarian hordes from the Middle Ages, knocking down the walls in Saxon lands".

It is the language, he says, of "far-conservatives" of "nationalists".

It's worth remembering, though, under whatever terms Romania enters the European Union, that - as with the new entrants from Eastern Europe who came in in May 2004 - the country has already undergone an extraordinary change.

Across the street from the EU's Information Point, in central Bucharest, you can still clearly see, on an office block opposite, the bullet scars from the 1989 revolution.

Romania's transformation has been profound, and it has a long way yet to go.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/5380978.stm

Published: 2006/09/26 09:45:47 GMT

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