EU Commissioner Johansson stresses need for migrants to address EU’s labor shortage
The EU member states will need to deal with acute labor shortage issues to counteract demographic decline, stressed the European Union Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson during a visit to Greece on Monday.
The EU requires an annual influx of one million migrants, as this is the figure of working-age population that leaves every year, Johansson said, during a conference on migration.
“That means that legal migration should grow more or less with one million per year and that is really a challenge to do that in an orderly way,” she noted.
Acknowledging current lawful migration rates at 3.5 million annually, Johansson emphasized the need for an orderly process.
The Commission projects a significant drop in the working population without migration, emphasizing migration’s vital role in sustaining Europe’s demographic balance.
Johansson also praised Greece’s “remarkable” progress on migration and stressed the need to invest in legal pathways and legal migration.
“It’s really impressive the journey that Greece has made to try to manage migration,” she said. “Does that mean we have solved all the challenges? Of course not. There are so many more. But this is proof that when we work together we can manage a great deal. And we have seen this at the European level as well.”
Earlier in the day, Johansson met Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, as well as Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis.
“We can move away from the chaos, from the irregular departures and arrivals into an orderly way,” she told reporters later in the day. “Greece is really at the forefront when it comes to a modern way of managing migration.”
In Athens today where I met with PM @Mitsotakis
We discussed the positive progress that Greece has made in managing migration in an orderly way, the need for more legal pathways and integration, as well as the crisis in the Middle East. pic.twitter.com/9ljTTQhdAe— Ylva Johansson (@YlvaJohansson) January 8, 2024
