While the president and the prime minister argue, the masses are emigrating.

The latest Eurostat data shows that 3.8% of European Union citizens aged 20-64 live and work outside their country of origin. Ten years ago, the figures stood at 2.5 percent. There are significant differences between individual EU members. For example, just one percent of working-age Germans work in an another EU member state, while in Romania the number is almost 20 percent, reports Index.hr on May 30, 2018.

The data also shows that EU citizens who have completed university or higher education are more mobile than those with lower levels of education. Among those who have moved to work in another EU member state, 32 percent have a university degree, and they are more often employed – 76 percent of EU citizens with higher education are employed, while general employment level in the EU stands at 72 percent.

The bureaucratic-statistical concept of "mobile citizens" in fact hides a disturbing truth about the mass emigration of the most educated people from some EU member states which will feel the negative consequences of the brain drain in the long run.

The largest share of people between the ages of 20 and 64 has left Romania, followed by Lithuania (15 percent of the total working-age population), while Croatia is in the third place (14 percent), followed by Portugal (13.9 percent) and Latvia (12.9 percent).

In contrast, in just one percent of working-age citizens of Germany have moved abroad to work in another EU member states, followed by the United Kingdom (1.1 percent), Sweden and France (1.3 percent).

It is not surprising that the employment rate of the emigrated Croats is much higher than that of the Croats who have stayed in the homeland, 79.8 percent in comparison to 63 percent. A similar situation is with the emigrants from Spain, Italy, Greece and Poland.

In total, 348,000 of working-age citizens migrated from Croatia to other EU member states by the end of 2017, including slightly more than 60,000 of those with a university degree. In this category, the worst situation is in Portugal, which has the highest rate of emigrated citizens with higher education (78 percent).

It should be noted that the freedom of movement of workers is one of the fundamental values ​​of the European Union, but the imbalances among members show that some countries may have major problems in the future due to the mass emigration of the population because of adverse economic conditions.

Translated from Index.hr.