Benefits of EU Membership

Free mobility offers fundamental liberty of locational choice – which is a value in itself – in addition to economic advantages. Asides from savings resulting from visa-free travel, free mobility of workers and students bring advantages in terms of the enhancement of human capital, exchange and diffusion of knowledge and information, and creation of cross-border networks. To illustrate the magnitude of student mobility and provide a non-monetary indicator of related benefits, Table 1 shows the number of participants in Erasmus+ per selection of Member States. Taking into account the population sizes, it emerges that some countries have a larger proportion of exchange students, consequently reaping advantages.

Table 1. Erasmus +, higher education student flows (call 2016)

Third column shows the sum of outgoing and ingoing Erasmus students as a

Box 3. Mutual recognition of academic qualifications

The EU has strongly facilitated the mobility of workers and students by ensuring that academic qualifications from different Member States are mutually recognised by universities and employers. This is possible thanks to the Bologna Process, which harmonised the structure of higher education and put the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System in place.

However, there are two sides of the free mobility coin. On one, it allows countries to access the workforce they need and workers to choose where to settle. On the other, this can lead to a 'brain drain', where skilled and often young workers leave less dynamic areas with fewer work opportunities and lower wages. Meanwhile, more dynamic areas – often located in the net payer countries – can attract additional workforce.