One of the bad points about the European Union is that it is a club. You can live for years here, but if you're in one of the sucky countries that won't let you have citizenship (well, as someone from the developed world anyway), you're stuck with permanent second-class status. That's not so bad in the US, Japan or other sovreign states. However, in the EU this means that when the economy goes four trotters skyward, your neighbors can move to Spain. You, however, are stuck.
That's why the European Union came up with the Directive on Long-Term Residency, which is supposed to give equal, or near equal, rights to those who live more than five years in a country. While laudable, two of the decent places in Europe, the UK and Ireland, opted out. So, while Latvians with no education can move to London in search of a job, an educated American who speaks fluent German, has a job and a decade living in Germany can't.
The EUObserver ran an article yesterday which highlighted this fact. Evidently the issue was over whether or not someone with a Russian long-term permit for a new member state, say like Estonia, could make use of the new directive to go to France while Estonian citizens could not. The answer is that the Russian couldn't go if the Estonian couldn't. Well, at least that bit of discrimination is equal.
Now, if the Commission would only get all the Western European countries who were supposed to enact the damn thing by the end of January to do so soon.
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