Poverty and Income Inequality - Impacts of the EU-enlargement on social unprivileged population groups in the EU-15 Countries

Résumé du document

The European Union is a community of 15 sovereign countries. In the year 1952 France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg decided to establish the European Coal and Steel Community. The aim of this paper is to discuss the two problems with regard to the expansion of the European Union. These problems are poverty and inequality in income distribution. Usually when people talk about such issues they primarily think about the prospective member states. We are not going to discuss the situation within the new member countries. The purpose of this paper is to change the perspective and focus on poverty an income inequality in "old? EU-15 countries. To be more precise, the focus lies in analyzing the influence of the expansion on the old 15 EU countries.

Extraits

[...] Furthermore Germany is one of the most influential forces in the European Union, either in political terms or in economical terms. One important point in the following analysis will focus up on the border regions and discuss possible impacts of the enlargement on the labour market, especially in the north- eastern and the south-eastern part of Germany. “Labour markets are a lot less integrated internationally than goods and capital markets. Freedom of movement is one of the “four basic freedoms” of the single market in the European Union. [...]

[...] But we can observe that countries with high unemployment rates usually tend to high risk of poverty rates. Of course there are exceptions, but the reasons for poverty are various and a lot of other factors are affecting the poverty situation within a country. With other words, high unemployment rates can be esteemed as one possible indicator for increased risk of poverty rates within a country. We want to pick up this point for the following analysis and concentrate on impacts of the enlargement on the labour markets within the EU15 zone. [...]

[...] Immigration inflows from these two countries into the European Union will be allowed without any restrictions. With other words, the old member countries have as regulation tool which provides the possibility to control the immigrant's inflows from the CEEC to the old European Union member states. If we take a short look at the GDP in the short-run, we will not recognize noteworthy changes. quantified by most economic models, the net growth effect of enlargement on EU GDP in the short-run is expected to be small”[19]. [...]

[...] But this very general description leads to a lot of unanswered questions. How huge must be the “lack of sufficient wealth” to define a person as poor? How should the term be defined? In which way different countries interpret poverty and poverty definitions? Is it possible to compare the poverty figures of one country with the poverty figures of another country? The list of partially answered and unanswered questions could be continued infinitely Definitions of poverty This aim of this section is to provide three common definitions for poverty. [...]

[...] The benefits of the enlargement will probably exceed the possible negative impacts of immigration in this region. If we assume that there is a significant high positive correlation between unemployment and poverty, we can argue that the pros of the enlargement will exceed the cons also in terms of poverty. This means more precisely that the enlargement could have positive effects on the poverty development in this region. Furthermore, the north-eastern part of Germany is not a very attractive working place for foreign immigrants. [...]