Specialists in Germany: Romanians who are actually Moldovans
Created: 05/10/2022, 14:52
By: Aleksandra Fedorska
Skilled workers are desperately needed in Germany.
© Julian Stratenschulte/dpa
From the Black Sea to West Germany: many Romanian workers are trying their luck in this country.
However, some of them are not Romanian at all.
Bucharest – You are looking for work and a better income: more and more people are leaving Romania, also for Germany.
In 2021, 844,000 people from the south-eastern European country lived in Germany, 36,000 more than in the previous year.
This made the Romanians the largest group of immigrants from other EU countries in the Federal Republic.
But Germany is only one of the destinations of the young and highly mobile Romanian workers.
Linguistic similarities, cultural ties and personal contacts have made Italy and the other Mediterranean countries the most popular job markets for Romanians in the EU.
Before the corona pandemic, around one million people with Romanian nationality lived and worked in Italy alone.
But that is changing: The Romanian Ministry of Labor assumes that the upheavals in the tourism industry triggered by the pandemic have caused many workers to leave the Mediterranean countries.
Some of the workers have returned to Romania, but the rest are looking for other job opportunities in other EU countries.
According to a report by the business
portal Ziarul Financiar
, the group of emigrants is getting younger and younger.
Around 20 percent of graduates from some of the best Romanian high schools leave the country and never return.
"Most of them go to the EU - Netherlands, Germany, France or Great Britain," Vasile Nicoară, director of the Mircea cel Bătrân National College in Constanţa,
told Ziarul Financiar
.
"Only a few of them want to return after they graduate." In surveys, around 80 percent of university graduates said they wanted to work abroad.
Romania: "Cometary economic upswing", but still many problems
Many Romanians would like to complete their degree in other European countries.
The country's education system is chronically underfunded.
The country only spends three percent of its gross national product on education.
In countries like Norway it is 6.7 percent, in Germany it is still 4.2 percent.
Around 15 percent of students in Romania leave school without any qualifications.
In addition, Romanian education experts assume that around half of the students who finish school are affected by functional illiteracy.
This means that they are unable to understand a simple text, nor can they summarize and pass on written information.
The Romania expert Kamil Całus from the Center for Eastern Studies is skeptical about these figures on Romanian labor migration.
"Romania's meteoric economic upswing in recent years has largely slowed down labor migration," says Całus in an interview with
IPPEN.MEDIA's Frankfurter Rundschau
.
"Instead, however, Moldovans with Romanian passports are counted as Romanians in many countries," the expert suspects.
About IPPEN.MEDIA
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IPPEN.MEDIA
network is one of the largest online publishers in Germany.
At the locations in Berlin, Hamburg/Bremen, Munich, Frankfurt, Cologne, Stuttgart and Vienna, journalists from our central editorial office research and publish for more than 50 news offers.
These include brands such as Merkur.de, FR.de and BuzzFeed Germany.
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Romania: Many Moldovans have a Romanian passport
In contrast to Romania, where wages and salaries are increasing rapidly, incomes in Moldova are low.
Applying for a Romanian passport is a matter of course for most Moldovans.
The Romanian state recognizes Moldovan independence and treats the neighboring state as a sovereign country.
Ethnically, however, Romania defines most residents of Moldova as Romanians, justifying their claim to Romanian nationality.
Many Moldovans take the opportunity to apply for a Romanian passport, which offers them all the opportunities to act on the European labor market on an equal footing with other EU citizens.
This group of workers is also young and very mobile.
Among other things, because she not only has Romanian, but also some Russian passports.
"In this way they optimize their professional opportunities," explains Maria Domańska, who deals with Russia at the Center for Eastern Studies, in the
Frankfurter Rundschau of IPPEN.MEDIA
.
Many Romanians can apply for Russian citizenship just as easily as Romanian.
This is especially true for the residents of Transnistria, where Russian troops are stationed and have created a pseudo-state.
