Mr. Ivailo Kalfin:

We did some very partial research on migrant workers, the ones that are coming from another country. We did it together with the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights last year and it was mostly focused on Ukrainian refugees. That happened to be a good example because what we saw there was that most of the ones within working age were looking for a job. The problem was knowledge of the language. They were eager to find jobs, which is not always the case with others. Without making a general survey on that, we found that the environment is very important. Of course, they are refugees from war, so that is not so much a free choice as to whether they stay or go, but again, in order to be productive, which is what they wanted to do, the public perception was very different. For example, in Poland, which is a neighbouring country with millions of Ukrainians, they felt very much at home. People were hosting them in their homes when they were fleeing the war, which is not the case in some other countries. By the way, Ireland is one of the good examples. I can think of other countries in Europe that were extremely negative vis-à-vis refugees. The thinking is that when you are a labour migrant, you do not go for just a while. You do not go somewhere to work for one or two years and then come back. You go for good. You go with your family. You want to settle. You want to stay there long term and this is the quality worker that countries would like. Then there should be acceptance. These people are not coming just to do some job and to produce some value; they are coming with their families. If you look across Europe, there are plenty of examples, such as the Turks in Germany, many Indians and Pakistanis in the UK and the Maghreb people in France. They came at the time of the industrial revolution when labour was needed, but they came to stay. They came with their families and now they are very much part of society. That has to be taken into consideration because very often migrant workers are wanted to do a particular job. They are very much needed, but then the public has to accept that it is also a larger commitment than the employer's one.