The Immigration and Trade Link in the European Union Integration Process

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse the link between immigration and trade among EU countries, particularly, in the context of the 2004 enlargement. The study tests whether the increase in immigrant stock from New Member States has any impact on the exports from the EU-15 to those markets or not. To that end the study applies an extended gravity model of international trade to panel data for three countries – Germany, Denmark and Portugal. The results show that increasing immigration from both New Member States and EU15 countries has a positive impact on the exports of both Portugal and Denmark. The results also suggest that less restrictive immigration policies have a positive impact on exports, and contribute to the normalization of exports of these countries to New Member States. Finally, these results do not hold in the case of Germany.International trade, immigration, European Union, economic integration, gravity model