How many will come? Thousands, millions? Does Europe need a new Iron Curtain? These questions dominate the ongoing negotiations on the eastward enlargement of the European Union. Western Europeans fear that the removal of barriers to migration would lead to a mass exodus of cheap(er) Eastern European workers from Eastern to Western Europe, which would place severe economic and political strains on the Western European target countries. And indeed, the East-West migration potential seems to be substantial. According to some guesstimates the migration flows from Central and Eastern to Western Europe could be up to 10 million people. Other assessments indicate more modest figures in the magnitude of about 4 million. Most of them (about 3 out of 5) would probably go to Germany.
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