The European Union has enlarged significantly in recent years, with a leap in January 2004 from 15 Member to 25 and finally to 27 in January 2007. The majority of the new Member States are situated in Eastern Europe with a recent experience of a challenging transition from a socialist planned economy to a free market economy. These new Member States are characterised by high unemployment rates and a relatively low GDP per capital. Simple economical reasoning suggests that these inequalities in an enlarged Europe will result in migration streams from the poorer regions in the East to the richer regions in the West. This potential European metamorphosis places the issue of labour mobility prominently on the policy agenda.
Even if important steps in order to improve the mobility in Europe have been made if we compare the mobility in USA or Canada we shall notice that however the mobility in EU is still under that level even if already Europeans are aware of the opportunities offered by the mobility of researchers.
Education and training play a part in making Europeans more open to the idea of moving to another country and also makes them more likely to actually do so. Those with higher educational qualifications show a more proactive behaviour when it comes to dealing with mobility, and persons with high qualifications are twice as likely to have moved as those with low or average education. The Eurobarometer results relating to the greater propensity of the highly educated to migrate also supply some substantiation that fears of a 'brain drain' may be legitimate in some new Member States in eastern Europe.
In order to create an environment that is more conducive to mobility some issues are considered as being most important:
Understanding and speaking languages remains an important feature for mobile workers. Although English is becoming more and more the universal professional language within multinational environments, a continuing investment knowledge and competencies of workers play an important role in the integration of internationally mobile workers within Europe.
There are still significant differences between Members that impact on the ease of cross-border migration. Although it is unlikely that EU's intention to invest in a better coordination of these different systems will in itself motivate States in terms of their social security systems, taxation systems and approach to health care provision, rules governing the transfer of pension rights and other institutional factors more workers to be mobile, it will certainly facilitate the transition for those workers who do decide to move.
The integration of workers into a new European country does not stop at the company door. People need new housing facilities, information on local resources, insights into the cultural traditions of the new region, language courses, and many other forms of support. A 'one-stop shop' for cross border mobile workers could make a significant contribution to lowering the barriers for migrating workers. Considering this challenges the strategic objective of DISCOVER Europe project is to straighten the EURAXESS network by stimulating the cooperation between the European Mobility Centres.
In order to attempt this ambitious goal two specific objectives have been consider:
a) To increase the expertise of the New Member state Mobility Centre (Romanian and Bulgarian) using the experience of other European Mobility Centres in order to reduce the disparities between the network members
b) To set up a pilot action aimed to support the networking with other European Centres in order to increase the cooperation within the EURAXESS network
in the language skills of European citizens remains crucial.
The transparency, recognition and transferability of skills, Through this ambitious goal the Discover Europe project will support the removing of obstacles to mobility and enhancing the career perspectives of researchers in Europe both coming and going to the two New Member States (Romania and Bulgaria). Also, the ambition of Discover Europe project is to highly increase the level of EURAXESS services across Europe, especially in view of 2008 when a substantial new scheme for international collaboration on human resources partnership scheme focusing on staff exchange between several European research organisations and organisations from countries covered by the European Neighbourhood Policy will be officially lanced. The work within the project is divided in 5 work packages: For more details see the step by step section.