Category: Uncategorized

“It is absolutely necessary to regularise workers who make this country work and who are, unfortunately, in an irregular situation”

For Laurent Berger, general secretary of CFDT, one of the main French workers’ unions, the French government’s recent proposal for the immigration law reform, which will be discussed in Parliament at the beginning of 2023, doesn’t go far enough.

One of the suggestions is to ease the professional integration of foreign workers by delivering a residence permit for “jobs in tension”, in sectors where it is difficult to fill the vacancies, such as in hospitality and construction.

In an interview for French television France 2, Laurent Berger suggests that the immigration situation requires an approach “not only economically useful, but also socially thankful to these workers”. He argues that they need to be “automatically regularised” and provided with work permits and official papers.

Young people are leaving. The population is ageing, and birth rates are declining. There is a chronic lack of workers, as they have been vacuumed out from the region – this is the gloomy picture of the Balkans today.

No wonder few want to stay. With wages a fraction of the EU average, the region is still entangled in border disputes, ethnic quarrels, rampant corruption, unfinished EU and NATO accession (in some states) and the ghosts of the wars of the 1990s.

“People see no future here, so they seek their fortunes in central and western Europe or anywhere else. It’s not only about the money, but above all about the comparatively lower quality of life [at home],” says Ilija Aceski, a professor of sociology in Skopje.

If one believes the projections of the United Nations, the World Bank and the statistical agencies, Bulgaria will have 38% fewer people in 2050 than in 1990. In Serbia, numbers will be down 24%, and North Macedonia and Croatia will see a 22% drop.

Unlike in Germany, France, Poland or even Romania, there is no influx of migrant workers to fill the vacancies. Despite the millions of migrants and refugees from the Middle East who have passed through the region in the last decade, almost no one wanted to stay. Just like the inhabitants of the Balkans, they dream of a life in wealthier countries.

Both the public and private sectors are hit. Everywhere you look, there is a chronic lack of doctors and nurses. The same goes for engineers, plumbers, bricklayers and other skilled professionals.

“It’s a vicious circle,” adds Aceski. “The more people leave, the more the overall quality of life dwindles. And that in turn causes even more people to flee.”

In his opinion, governments have so far offered very few resources and sound plans to stop the exodus.

2.2 million Poles lived and worked abroad for more than three months during the last year. In parallel, the number of Ukrainian workers is rising in Poland, many replacing the missing Polish labour force.

Even before the war, Ukrainians came to Poland in large numbers in search of work. Last year there were 1.5 million. After the Russian invasion this number more than doubled.

Ukrainian workers have become crucial to the Polish economy, which continues to grow, despite skyrocketing inflation.

Ukrainians coming to Poland are first hired for the lowest-paid jobs, like the Poles when they arrived in west European countries.

Two years ago, I met Andrei Amariei*, a young Romanian who had been working in the German meat industry. At that time, the pandemic was wreaking havoc in Europe, and the role of essential workers across Europe was making headlines.

Andrei told me about 12 hour-shifts in freezing temperatures, long weeks without a day off, and a salary the bosses often slashed with no justification. “Germans see the Romanians as three or four classes below them, as the lowest in Europe,” he summed up.

Andrei is one of millions of Romanians trying to earn a living in western Europe, many of whom face discrimination and slave-like conditions.

In their absence, the Romanian economy struggles to find replacements. In 2022, the government allowed companies to hire 100,000 non-EU workers – the largest number ever authorised. Most of them come from Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan or Vietnam. I see them working in fast food restaurants and on construction sites, crossing Bucharest on bikes to deliver food, or in their free time, trying to make sense of this messy and confusing east European city.

Their experience is similar to that of millions of Romanians abroad since the Revolution. In 2020, residents of a village in central Romania rioted after a local bakery hired two workers from Sri Lanka. The story inspired award-winning director Cristian Mungiu’s latest movie, R.M.N.

A current investigation described the conditions of many foreign workers in Romania: they work up to 60 hours a week, sometimes without a contract, and live in overcrowded containers.

In the absence of policies to improve the European labour market and build solidarity in a world where profit dictates all, a chain of abuses is linking the West and the East. The exploited soon becomes the exploiter, and the weakest will suffer, as they always do.

*The name was changed, as the worker feared a legal dispute with his former employer.

“We want beer! We want beer!” roared the crowd during the opening match of the 2022 World Cup. In a country where migrant workers have been deprived of their rights, where women and LGTBQ people are oppressed, and where the World Cup bid was won with cold hard cash, the public drew the line at Doha’s decision to forbid the sale of alcohol around the stadiums.

The Qatar World Cup is facing the biggest boycott of any major sports event in recent history. But something is bugging me. Russia hosted the World Cup in 2018. Russia, a country notoriously undemocratic, where political opponents and journalists fall from windows, get shot on their doorstep or are poisoned with polonium, and where the World Cup bid was also won by dirty money.

Was there a boycott there? No. Sounds like something has changed… Or that there are some double standards. Why were European societies ‘ok’ with Russia’s Cup and not with Qatar?

Let me underline some aspects that could play a role: Qatar is different from us Europeans, and the ban on alcohol is just a small part. We could close our eyes to politics and focus on the game in Russia with the help of all the party that comes with football: beer, pre-match joy on the streets, fights with rival fans, and even prostitution.

You can find none of that ambience in Qatar. This time, there is a specific anti-Qatar feeling, driven in part because of its strict Islamic-based laws, but also because it is unattainable for the average fan to attend.

Many fans feel the show has been stolen from them. That is why we do not have the incentive to close our eyes, as we did with Russia.

10,000 French fans are expected to make the trip to Qatar. This is one third of the 27,000 French attendees at the previous World Cup in Russia, and almost half the 17,000 who traveled to Brazil in 2014.

In Doha, even the tricolor shirts are discreet. Libération’s correspondent did not see a single one during the opening ceremony.

Supporters have suggested several reasons for this drop: from the difficulties of having a holiday in the winter, and higher costs to some fans’ concerns about supporting a disastrous World Cup in terms of human rights.

The knowledge that Qatar most likely won the right to host the World Cup using bribes is widespread in Poland. Yet neither the Polish Football Association, nor anyone from the national team has ever seriously considered boycotting the championship because of this.

An important reason for this silence might be that for years the Polish Football Association (PZPN) tolerated corruption in Polish football. Some of its members were even involved. Investigations are still ongoing. Last week, police detained two high-ranking Polish Football Association board members at Warsaw airport, who were on their way to Qatar for the Poland-Mexico match. The charges: fraud and money laundering.

Polish national coach Czesław Michniewicz is also a controversial figure. The media revealed that in the past he had been in telephone contact more than 700 times with the representative of a Polish football team who was in charge of fixing matches during the first football league in the early 2000s.

This was a huge scandal in which more than 600 people were charged: among them, footballers and coaches. A network pre-determined match results over the phone, with players dropping bribes to referees and the opposing team in the locker room before the game. Michniewicz was never charged, but he also never explained why he was in such frequent contact with the main suspect.

Then again, the Polish public does not seem to require this of the coach. The calls to boycott the championships are quiet and the viewing figures for the matches on TV are record-breaking. Cezary Kulesza, CEO of the Polish Football Association said: “Teams can always boycott any tournament and simply not go to it, but how many of those will you find? No one will go as far as that.”

It seems that neither ethics or transparency count at the World Cup, only results.

“To leave now would mean to betray Estonian football,” said the president of the Estonian football association, Aivar Pohlak, who appeared to be dying on the country’s national TV station.

The Macbeth-inspired monologue was not performed by Pohlak himself, but a comedian from the group Kinoteater, who fill in time between World Cup matches.

On the first day of the championship, the group criticized human rights’ violations and workers’ poor conditions in Qatar, which Pohlak claimed was against the facts. That is when Kinoteater decided to respond during a special broadcast, and it set Estonian social media ablaze.

Pohlak’s decades-long iron grip on Estonian football is still strong, despite FIFA ranking the men’s team outside the top 100 and the women’s in the 96th place. The president has a history of controversy.

The latest will probably blow over, but his tenure may go into extra time.

​​In my family, we watched every international football match together. Every World Cup, every Euro Cup. My parents told me stories about their favorite players. About Maradona or Ronaldo. I was a diehard fan.

The last game we watched together was the 2010 World Cup final in South Africa: Spain against the Netherlands. No one spoke for the whole match, and no one went to the bathroom. We stared spellbound at the television, until we jumped up and let out the tension when Andrés Iniesta scored in overtime, and crowned Spain the world champions.

Spain’s tiki-taka football mesmerized the world, but for me, it didn’t last beyond 2010, because of the development of my political and social attitudes, which are contrary to corrupt sports events.

When I was younger, the only side I had to pick was a football team to support. That was quite easy. Always Spain, second Brazil, third Argentina, and the fourth place for the underdog. As I grew older I learned that Maradona wasn’t quite the saint my parents claimed him to be and that my favorite sport was riddled with criminality.

Everything seems to revolve around sums of money, no longer around the magical ball. I can only watch a game for a quarter of an hour, until I start thinking how professional football has no connection to my reality. That professional soccer is riddled with fraud and graft, and that ratings, television rights and finances dominate the game, rather than strategy and tactics.

There was a football that I loved. But scandals seem a part of professional football. I’m nostalgic about the game that made me cheer and jump up with excitement. I miss the rollercoaster of emotions. Professional football no longer holds a candle to that. And the championship in Qatar won’t do so either.

“‘Don’t worry. It happens sometimes due to paperwork. Meanwhile, borrow some money if you can’ – This is what I was told when I asked the Public Health Fund why my maternity leave payments were overdue. It happened last year after I gave birth to my second child. The money started arriving after a three-month delay. As a single mother with a newborn, this delay became really stressful. I had to borrow money from my parents. I can’t understand how the state could leave me like that when I was at my most vulnerable.”

In North Macedonia, the state fund covers 100% of a mother’s wages during maternity leave. But Lidija Stancevska, 43, from Skopje, told us that mothers are sometimes left penniless before the state’s ‘helping hand’ arrives.

Meanwhile, the country is gearing up for a public debate on extending maternity leave from nine months up to one year. But what good is a formal extension if the cash turns up late?