New EU member states’ emigration: Projections for future and lessons for the new EU candidates

Abstract

Abstract Unlike the old member states that compensate the negative net birth rate with immigration, the new EU member states face both migrational and natural demographic decline. In the last decade, poor level of economic development as well as the accession to the EU encouraged net emigration from the new member states. Panel data for the 12 new member states for the 2007 - 2016 period were used to determine how the length of membership and GDP per capita trailing behind the EU average affect the proportion of the net emigration. It has been shown that on average a country has to reach at least 85 percent of the average EU GDP p.c. (measured in PPS) to prevent emigration, but this level increases with each year of membership by 1.37 percentage points.