In Europe (or at least in Germany) there has been a bit of fuss about the soon-to-come expansion of the EU. What people seem to fear most is the fact that companies from countries such as Poland or the Czech Republic will flood the market in areas like building industries or (just heard it on TV) conveyance of passengers.
At the time of writing this, I have no real clue about my opinion on this topic, but I'll hopefully be able to clear the situation for me in the next passages.
To some extent I can understand the concerns of average brick layers or bus drivers in Germany, France or one of the other EU nations: A lot of those brick layers/bus drivers/whoever have been in fear of loosing their jobs for the past years and now, in the middle of the job crisis, they are confrontend with a situation in which hundreds of thousands of their colleagues from Eastern Europe can theoretically come to their place and start doing their job for much less money. Their concerns are just humanly and they have nothing to do with xenophobia. (Unless people start using those concerns as an alibi for their xenophobia. But that's another story.)
So let's see if these concerns are valid: I'm by no means an expert in the building industries, but I believe that in most tenders the company with the lowest offer gets the job. This wasn't a problem until recently, because some sort of magical "economic balance" ensured that the price difference wasn't too significant in nationally bounded industries and thus everybody at least theoretically had a chance to get the job in a tender. Now that (starting with 2005, if I remember correctly) companies from other EU nations will be able to bid on tenders without any political or legal constraints, this situation might change rather drastically: There are a lot of countries especially in Eastern Europe with an income level that is dramatically lower than the level in countries that are currently part of Europe. Because of that companies from those "new" countries will be able to bid an extremely low price. For me this actually sounds like a valid concern.
So what can be done about that? Objecting to the expansion is certainly the wrong way: The politicians are partially right when they say that the expansion is a historic event and missing the chance to write this bit of history is unacceptable. So what else? Avoiding the price decline in the industry with a bunch of laws? Doesn't sound so appealing to me. Awaiting the issue? Why not — time will show if things work out.
And in the end the outsorcing intentions of groups like Siemens seem to be much more dangerous for the economic strength of "Old Europe" for me than all brick layers from the East together.
Vive l'Europe!
Remember what I wrote at the beginning? I wanted to become clear about my opinion on this topic. I didn't really succeed, but I think I made some progress. Do you have an opinion about the EU expansion as well? I'd be happy to discuss with you. Or just leave a comment.