FRIEDRICH-EBERT-STIFTUNG 44 5 HUNGARY: LABOUR MOBILITY AND SOCIAL EUROPE Zoltán Pogátsa, University of West Hungary Summary –– Hungary’s proportion of labour migrants per capita is currently one of the lowest in the 2004 accession group of new member states, but it has been in­creasing exponentially since the 2011 opening of the (near) neighbouring labour markets of Austria and Germany. –– There are three major destination labour markets: Germany, Austria and the United Kingdom. Outward labour migrants are younger and more educated than the overall labour force within Hungary. This has not disrupted the domestic labour market in a major way so far, except with regard to the medical profession in certain geographical areas and professions. –– A sustainable solution to the issue of labour migra­tion from east to west should not involve rolling back the acquis communautaire on the free movement of labour. Instead, it should concentrate on imple­menting the agenda of a Social Europe, which has remained at the rhetorical level so far. Guaranteeing decent living standards in central and eastern Euro­pean member states would go a long way towards diminishing the push factors of outward migration. If citizens of these countries felt that they had future prospects they would be much less likely to seek their fortune in western European countries. This would include a hard acquis on social policy, Europe-wide minimum wages and Rehn-Meidner–type sectoral collective agreements. 5.1 BRAIN GAIN »Brain gain« is defined in this chapter as intra-European Union(EU) labour migration towards Hungary from other EU member states. Inward labour migration to Hungary is cur­rently negligible both by international comparison and in con­trast to outward labour migration. At the end of 2013(the latest figures available), 51,002 EU citizens were registered as working in Hungary, according to the central statistical office. This compares with a total labour market of 3.9 million. This is true of all major macro-regions of the EU(the new member states, southern Europe, Scandinavia and western and central Europe). In the decades following the political and economic transition in 1989 inward labour migration from neighbouring countries was significant, but this has petered out. The main source at the time was ethnic Hungar­ian speakers from Romania, Slovakia and other neighbouring countries, in search of the relatively better work prospects and living standards in Hungary. These migrants were mostly of low educational background. Hárs reported in 2003 that 64.9 per cent of migrants from Romania had general school qualifications or lower, as did 38.7 per cent of migrants from Slovakia. They were employed mainly in auxiliary jobs, rang­ing from harvesting through home care to construction. Most of these source countries, however, have since become EU member states, which allows them to migrate to seek work in other, more affluent EU member states. This is especially important in the case of Romania, where even citizens whose mother tongue is Hungarian speak good or excellent Roma­nian. Since Romanian is linguistically very close to Italian and Spanish, understandably the labour markets of these south­ern European member states became major targets for labour migration by Romanian citizens. This was already so before Romania joined the EU, even though the free movement of labour did not apply to that country back then. The labour markets of these economies were superior to the Hungarian one both in terms of job prospects and income levels, which made Hungary increasingly secondary in importance, even for Hungarian speakers from neighbouring countries. Frequently, knowledge of a third language – English or German – has allowed citizens of Romania or Slovakia to take advantage of labour migration to the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany,