Commissioners Cecilia Malmström (Home Affairs) and László Andor (Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion) have welcomed the OECD "International Migration Outlook 2013", published today.

The report analyses recent trends in international migration, the labour market situation, the fiscal impact of migration and discrimination against immigrants.

It also calls upon governments to adapt migration policies to promote economic migration in order to tackle shortages in the short-run but also long-term challenges such as demographic ageing.

Main findings

The report clearly shows that migrant's labour market situation has worsened over the past years, both in absolute levels and compared with the nationals' situation.

In addition, the employment rate of third-country nationals is much below the average and this is particularly the case among women and high-skilled immigrants.

Links with EU initiatives

The OECD report points out that raising immigrants' employment rate to that of the nationals would result in substantial gains, notably in European OECD countries. In this context, the European Commission proposed recommendations on labour market integration of migrants for a number of Member States in its Country-Specific Recommendations (CSRs) published at the end of May.

As the report emphasizes, despite the difficulties to measure discrimination of migrants, many studies conclude that there remain many cases of discrimination against immigrants in the hiring process. As underlined in the Social Investment Package (SIP) adopted by the Commission in February 2013, "labour markets are not yet inclusive". This remains particularly true for immigrants. Against this background, the EU supports integration and anti-discrimination policies, beyond the existing EU legal framework that forbids discrimination.