How to Handle the Exodus? Political Feedback to EU Freedom of Movement in Eastern Europe

Intra-EU migration has siginificantly increased since the EU’s eastern enlargements in 2004 and 2007. This trend has caused public and political concern in some receiving states, such as in the UK’s mobilization against freedom of movement (FoM) during Brexit. Less well documented and researched, but equally vital, is how political actors in EU countries of origin have responded to FoM. It was the liberal ideal of free intra-EU migration and mobility, and the expected material returns on this policy in the form of remittances and export of surplus labour, that once motivated many eastern European countries to bid on EU membership. However, these initially positive attitudes towards FoM in Central and Eastern European countries (CEE) appear to have changed with persistent emigration. Faced with the effects of brain drain, youth drain, and general population loss on the economy and the welfare state, actors in some CEE countries have critiqued emigration as an effect of FoM. Despite the vital importance of these issues, only recently have scholars begun to study ‘exit’ from the home country as a dimension of FoM. Responding to an emerging research agenda, the contribution seeks answers to the following question: At the national and EU levels, how do policy measures and their associated discourses aim to handle the exodus of people from Eastern European member states? Borrowing from theories of institutional change it is argued that FoM effects create a form of ‘policy drift’ that motivate political feedback. Normatively and structurally, reform of FoM is neither an option for nor desired by the majority of actors which is why patterns of ‘institutional layering’ can be observed that aim at fencing in mass emigration as an effect of the EU principle in CEE member states.