The European Economic Area (EEA) facilitates a common market for goods, labour, services, and capital. Promoting integration between countries through the free movement of labour (and more broadly, persons), pre-dates the previous iterations of the EEA. However, during recent expansions of the European Union, transition agreements were implemented to limit migration from new Member States to existing ones. There are limited resources detailing these restrictions and the history in the EEA prior to Dr. Emily Barker’s article “A timeline of freedom of movement in the European Economic Area”, published on Open Research Europe.
Open Research Europe spoke with Dr. Emily Barker about her research and what open science means to her. Read the full interview below.
How would you summarize your Research Article?
The research focuses on the expansion of the freedom of movement in Europe. The European Union (EU), and by extension the European Free Trade Area (EFTA), allow free movement of persons, goods, capital and services. The Research Article documents the early versions of the EU and shows the evolution and expansions. It also outlines the differences with Switzerland, which is a member of the EFTA group of countries but not the European Economic Area (EEA).
When a country joins the EU, that does not necessarily give their citizens full access to the labour markets of existing member states. Using the information gathered from the document, analysis has enabled to production of a table to summarise when the countries joined the EU as well as the freedom of movement of persons. The latter of which being the focal point of the Research Article.
What inspired you to investigate the topic of your recent publication?
While doing research for a different paper, I discovered that there were very few resources that easily summarise when countries were able to gain full access to another country’s labour market. This paper was born from necessity, as I assumed that a piece as simple as this would exist outside of Wikipedia or there would be peer-reviewed research, but I couldn’t find one. I decided to compile the information into this Research Article as it may be helpful to other researchers in the future.
What key findings came from your article and what are their impacts?
The article uses a document analysis to produce a table that details what year each of the 28 countries of the EU (as of 2019) and 4 EFTA countries gained full freedom of movement to each of the other countries. The table with specific years between countries to account for migration restrictions which has been a highly politicised topic not only now, but in earlier expansions. Interestingly, the case of Switzerland is unique, as it has independent policies from the EEA.
In the introduction, I include a table of the years when there were expansions of the EU and the countries who have applied to be members. To explain how the table was compiled, there is a summary of the development of the entity what is now known as the EU. I also look at other common freedom of movement markets such as the Nordic Passport Union, and the link between Ireland and the United Kingdom, which are not as well-known. Furthermore, there is a discussion of the future of the EU which is what a lot of the impacts could be. It is an interesting discussion but one that hasn’t been touched on much in existing literature. The article focuses on the expansion of the EU (and creation of EFTA), but I do mention Brexit. The United Kingdom voted to leave the EU in 2016, though the actual exit didn’t occur until 2020. This highlighted, as well as some of the rising populism in Europe, dissatisfaction of existing members and some reform that is required.
What is most notable is how far the bloc is from future expansion. Between 2004-2013, the EU nearly doubled in size from 15 to 28 members, caused primarily by its eastern expansion. The EU-15 (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and The United Kingdom) were joined by 11 former Eastern European countries plus Cyprus and Malta. Eight countries, or the A8, joined in 2004 which was met with great opposition for the labour market due to large gaps in economic development. The only countries to fully open their labour markets were Ireland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. There were caveats to this, but some of these restrictions lasted for up to seven years.
In 2007, Bulgaria and Romania joined, and finally Croatia in 2013. Some of the Eastern European countries did impose reciprocal restrictions on the nationals from the countries that imposed restrictions on them. This is why the table isn’t as simple as joining the EU and assuming equal status to the existing member states. The imposition of migration restrictions wasn’t the first case of it, since Spain and Portugal, who joined in 1986 experienced similar restrictions, but these were lifted earlier than planned.
The bulk of the Research Article focuses on the expansion of the EU but as a part of the conclusion, it is also important to look at potential future expansions. To join the EU, a country must become a candidate country. Some applicants are initially classified as a candidate country, while others are potential candidate countries. Of these existing candidate countries, all but one (Turkey) are located in Eastern Europe, and Kosovo is currently the only potential candidate country (correct as of May 2024).
Five of the nine candidate countries are in the Western Balkans, while the others applied in the months following the invasion of Ukraine. These are Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. These recent applicants can be treated differently to the Western Balkans group, as Georgia and Moldova have pro-Russian breakaways regions and Ukraine is in a war with Russia. The Western Balkans candidate countries consist of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia. None of the candidate countries, in terms of agreements or ‘Chapters’, are close to joining the EU. Of the 33 Chapters (34 for Serbia) needing to be completed before joining the EU, Montenegro has the most, at 3.
Why is open science important to you?
Open science is important as it allows researchers access to others’ research that can help further the understanding of a certain topic. Putting research behind paywalls hinders academic research, limiting the resources that researchers can access. In some fields, such as economics, working versions of research are produced, while in other fields it is common to go straight to journal publication, which often means the research is locked behind a paywall that some universities or researchers cannot access. This can prevent researchers accessing new ideas that would benefit them or prevent repetition of existing research. Open Research Europe has a version of record of research published on the platform which can show the paper’s development from first to current editions, all of which are freely available to access for the reader.
What motivated you to publish with Open Research Europe & how did you find the submission process?
This Research Article is an interdisciplinary feature that is of interest to many researchers, particularly in the current climate of heightened populism across many countries, in Europe and the wider developed world. There is no reliable resource that collates this data and I didn’t feel it was suitable for traditional journal publication. Open Research Europe offered a simple solution that still gave benefits of rigorous peer review while facilitating article versioning, so each version of the Research Article can be visible.
What are your next steps?
The research contained within this Research Article has been used in my research to produce a variable to represent the theoretical labour market size of a country. The research was originally featured in Barker and Bijak (2021) and features in forthcoming work that is in the areas of forecasting migration and studying the effects of migration shocks and the research has been featured in The Human Migration Database app.
