Europe Immigration News

The Prime Minister of the Netherlands Jan Peter Balkenende stopped in Melbourne today, and while visiting Australia's Immigration Museum said his country can learn a lot from Australia's immigration policies.

He is in Australia for a five day visit to celebrate 400 years of Dutch-Australian relations. The leader of the Dutch parliament went on to say that Australia has an extremely strict immigration policy, in which economic growth, knowledge of the English language and health play a major role.

A leak from high ranking European Union sources to the German newspaper Die Welt has forced Brussels to announce the inclusion of two more countries to join the EU.

The two countries named by the sources were Bulgaria and Romania. This decision by the European Commission is a success for Brittish Prime Minister Tony Blair, who had been pushing for enlargement of the EU.

A study by ING bank in small and medium sized firms in Flanders, the Netherlands and Poland revealed that overseas workers exert a positive economic impact.

The study by ING investigated four forms of internationalisation in small and medium sized companies.

However countries involved in the study still employ a relatively low percentage of foreign labour.

Ministers from six European Union members met in Heiligendamm a town in north-east Germany to discuss the possible introduction of an "integration contract" for immigrants to the EU.

In the contract would be obligations immigrants would need to respect concerning EU values. The obligations in the contract would be a pre-requisite for residency.

Germany plans to keep its current ban on foreign workers from new European Union states entering its labour market till 2009, vice-chancellor and labour minister Franz Muentefeing told Passaver Neve Presse newspaper.

By extending the restrictions to the free movement of labour from the 8 new EU states, Germany wants to defer tension to its labour market. The German rate of unemployment currently stands at 12%.

The Directorate General, Immigration & Passports, Ministry of the Interior of Pakistan has decided to establish facilitation desks at all International Airports for issuing visas to businessmen upon their arrival in the country.