Assessing the future migration potential of the EU candidate countries

Abstract

In the realm of the EU accession, the EU candidate countries and EU are facing a number of challenges raised by the potential migration from these countries to EU. In this paper we try to answer the question if the fear of large migration pressure from these countries to EU is justified by estimating the migration potential of Croatia, Macedonia and Turkey to Germany, as the most dominant EU receiving country of immigrants in the period 1997-2007. The results from the extended gravity model revealed that the ratio between unemployment rate in the country of origin and the country of destination as well as the social network effects are the main economic determinants of migration from EU candidate countries to Germany.