Long-term Social, Economic and Fiscal Effects of Immigration into the EU: The Role of the Integration PolicyJRC Working Papers in Economics and Finance, 2017/4

摘要

The issues of the forced migration and integration of refugees in the EU societyand labour markets are high on the policy agenda. Apart from humanitarian aspects,a sustainable integration of accepted refugees is important also for social, economic,budgetary and other reasons. Although, the potential consequences of the refugeeacceptance are being often discussed, little scientific evidence has been provided forthe policy debate so far in the context of the current refugee crisis. The present studyattempts to shed light on the long-run social, economic and budgetary effects of therapidly increasing forced immigration into the EU by performing a scenario analysis ofalternative refugee integration scenarios. Our simulation results suggest that, althoughthe refugee integration (e.g. by the providing language and professional training) iscostly for the public budget, in the medium- to long-run, the social, economic and fiscalbenefits may significantly outweigh the short-run refugee integration costs. Dependingon the integration policy scenario and policy financing method, the annual long-run GDPeffect would be 0.2% to 1.4% above the baseline growth, and the full repayment of theintegration policy investment (positive net present value) would be achieved after 9 to 19years.