Μake us preferred on Google With an eye toward addressing labor shortages and tightening enforcement of existing regulations, the European Commission approved its new Fair Labour Mobility Package on September 16.
While any institutional step toward greater transparency is welcome, experts are sounding a warning: making mobility “easier” doesn’t necessarily mean making it “fair” for workers.
As Wouter Zwysen, a senior researcher at the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), writes in an analysis for Social Europe, genuinely fair mobility would mean that relocating within the EU for work is just as simple as moving within one’s own country. In a healthy labor market, pay should be based on skills and the job itself, not on where someone comes from. Today’s European reality, however, falls dramatically short of that ideal.
The trap of “shortages” and unattractive jobs
Labor mobility is consistently promoted as the key tool for making the market function more efficiently. According to reports from the EURES network, worker mobility is meant to correct imbalances, moving people from regions with a labor surplus to those with high demand.
But a deeper problem often goes unspoken: staffing shortages aren’t simply about a lack of available workers, they often stem from the fact that many jobs are simply unappealing. Mobility ends up functioning as a quick fix to plug the gaps, letting employers avoid having to improve wages and working conditions. While migration and mobility are genuinely necessary for the economy, they cannot substitute for quality jobs.
A harsh reality
In practice, “mobility” often functions as a euphemism within European bureaucracy. For the worker involved, moving to another member state amounts to ordinary migration, just without the need for a visa. These workers face serious obstacles:
- Cultural and language barriers that complicate daily life
- Undervalued qualifications, as their degrees are often met with suspicion
- A lack of social networks, which limits their footing in the labor market
As a result, roughly 950,000 Europeans who relocate for work each year (out of a total of about 10 million working-age people living outside their home country) often end up in jobs below their qualifications and under worse conditions. These flows continue to run mainly from poorer to wealthier countries, functioning as a cheap pool of economic migration, particularly from Central and Eastern Europe.
Risks on the job site
Those who relocate for short-term work or as posted workers are especially vulnerable, left in a state of total dependence on the employer company. These labor flows frequently operate below the radar of regulatory oversight.
As serious workplace accidents in the construction sector have made clear, long and complex subcontracting chains often come paired with a complete disavowal of responsibility. Unions across Europe point out that mobile workers face enormous risks in sectors like agriculture, food processing, and transport, in the absence of meaningful legal clarity and enforcement.
The real test for the new package will be whether it genuinely protects workers and ensures they receive fair compensation for their skills. The risk remains visible: that workers continue to be treated primarily as a cheap, vulnerable economic resource to satisfy the pressures of Western European businesses, rather than mobility being used to promote quality employment.
