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42 I Eastern Europe bne December 2018
The flood of Gastarbeiters leaving Ukraine to work in Poland has peaked
The flood of Ukrainians leaving to work in EU countries has reached its peak
desired visa-free travel deal between Ukraine and the European Union (EU) in November 2016. The deal doesn't
give Ukrainians the right to work in the EU, but countries like Poland, desperate to fill empty shop floor bench places, quickly put in place special work permit schemes that do grant limited right to work permissions. Millions of Ukrainians left their homeland, although typically most go for an average of three months to make some extra cash before they return home again.
Remittances to Ukraine soared.
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) calculated that between 2015 and 2017 the expats sent home $7bn in 2015, $7.5bn in 2016 and $9.3bn in 2017. But it seems the growing remit- tances have now peaked and the Gastarbeitersare expected to send home around $9bn this year – more or less the same amount as last year.
“The increased wave of migration from Ukraine to Poland, which began in 2014 is slowly beginning to decelerate. This migration is still mainly temporary
in nature, and it is difficult to assess
to what extent it may become fully residential. Probably over the passage of time, the current circular migration model will stop attracting new people. However, Poland remains the main EU country in, which Ukrainians work, because of several competitive advan- tages: extensive migration networks, a liberal procedure for legalising resi- dence and work (for short periods).
In addition, despite the fact that the salaries migrants earn in Poland are
Ben Aris in Berlin
The flood of Ukrainians leaving the country to look for work in the
EU countries that began in 2014 has peaked and will stabilise or start to decrease in 2019, according to a report by the Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW) released in October.
Ukraine suffered from a catastrophic economic collapse with GDP contracting by 17% in the first quarter of 2015, but Ukrainians had already started to leave as the country descended into political chaos during the Euromaidan revolution a year earlier.
Incomes plummeted as a result of the shock caused by the violent change
of government. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently called Ukraine the “poorest country in Europe” – behind even little Moldova – with a gross domestic product per capita in cur- rent prices in US dollar terms of $2,964 in 2018, according to October's update of the multinational lender’s World
www.bne.eu
Economic Outlook. That puts Ukraine behind Moldova ($3,226), Belarus ($6,020) and Russia ($10,950).
At the same time Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is booming and suffer-
ing from an acute labour shortage, with jobless rates across the region falling to record lows. The boom CEE has been enjoying for the last four years has reached
“Millions of Ukrainians left their homeland, although typically most go for an average of three months”
its peak as countries in the region start to run up against their structural limits, but wages in Poland, a favourite destination for Ukraine’s Gastarbeiters, are still four times higher than at home.
The trickle turned into a flood after President Petro Poroshenko won a much-
small compared to countries in the west of the EU, the low living costs allow
for regular and relatively high remit- tances to Ukraine,” Marta Jaroszewicz, an analyst with the Poland-based OSW, said in a report entitled “Migration from Ukraine to Poland: the trend stabilises” released in October.