08/25/2024 – 16:55
In light of the rise of the anti-immigration AfD in polls, the IW institute confirms: foreign labor accounts for almost 6% of the region’s GDP. The majority comes from Poland and the Czech Republic. An analysis by the German Economic Institute (IW) reveals that foreign workers have become an indispensable element of the economy of the eastern German states – Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia, until 1990 part of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), under socialist rule.
In 2023, around 403,000 foreign passport holders worked in these five states, around 173,000 more than five years earlier,” the IW found: “These workers alone are responsible for generating 24.6 billion euros [R$ 153 bilhões]equivalent to around 5.8% of the region’s GDP.” The conclusion is that they “are indispensable for the Eastern states: between 2018 and 2023, the number of employed Germans in the region decreased by 116,000.”
Warning to anti-immigrant AfD
In the context of the upcoming state elections and the steady advance of the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, the authors emphasize that if fewer immigrants had come to the East in the past five years, it would have been an economic setback rather than an expansion.
“The AfD is constantly attacking immigrants, while polls are showing favourable results. At the same time, many immigrants are living in fear. The irony is that they are the ones who are helping the East German economy.” Co-author Wido Geis-Thöne points out that “this makes it all the more important for the region to remain open to the rest of the world, because only then will East Germany remain successful.”
Saxony was the eastern state that benefited most from foreign labor (€7.9 billion in turnover), followed by Brandenburg (€6.8 billion) and Thuringia (€3.9 billion). Most foreign workers in the East come from neighboring Poland and the Czech Republic, followed by Romania and Ukraine. Their main activities are construction, road construction, and temporary services.
av (AFP,Reuters)
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